Give Me Your Hand

Gabriela Mistral (1889 – 1957), translated by Ursula K. Le Guin ↗

Give me your hand and give me your love,
give me your hand and dance with me.
A single flower, and nothing more,
a single flower is all we'll be.

Keeping time in the dance together,
singing the tune together with me,
grass in the wind, and nothing more,
grass in the wind is all we'll be.

I'm called Hope and you're called Rose:
but losing our names we'll both go free,
a dance on the hills, and nothing more,
a dance on the hills is all we'll be.

Notes

Where Ursula K. Le Guin traced the vast, solitary loom of cosmic time, Gabriela Mistral draws that great river down into a child’s circular dance, anchoring the infinite in the clasp of two warm palms and the simple pledge of a shared step. The speaking subject transforms maternal devotion and folk rhythm into a sacred incantation; declaring that like a single flower on the hill or a solitary song woven into the breeze, our separate, wandering lives find their balance only when we join the circle and move as one. It anchors September’s theme of Echo in the ancient cadence of communion and return, reminding us that life does not preserve itself in isolation, but reverberates endlessly through the tender choreography of hands reaching out to weave another into the song. #September #GabrielaMistral #Hands #Life #Poetry

About the author

Gabriela Mistral ↗

Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, known by her pseudonym Gabriela Mistral, was a Chilean poet-diplomat, journalist and educator. She read widely in theosophy, became a member of the secular or Third Franciscan order in 1925, but rarely attended mass. She was the first Latin American author to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1945, "for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world". Some central themes in her poems are nature, betrayal, love, a mother's love, sorrow and recovery, travel, and Latin American identity as formed from a mixture of Native American and European influences. She also wrote an immense body of prose, about 800 articles that circulated throughout the Spanish-speaking world, on a range of topics: geography, education, profiles of her fellow writers, politics, and more. Her image is featured on the 5,000 Chilean peso banknote.