Stylistic Expressions & Formal Language After studying Module 6: Lecture Materials & Resources, discuss the following: Examine stylistic expressions, conflicts, and shifts, in form and languag

translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

In mountains I grew up,
three dozen peaks around me.
I seem never, never,
though I hear my steps departing,
to have lost them, not in the day,
not in the starlit night,
and though in pools I see
myself with snowy hair,
I never left them, they never left me
like a child forsaken.
And though they might call me
runaway, deserter,
I had them and I have them
always, always.
And their gaze follows me.

Montañas Mías

En montañas me crié
con tres docenas alzadas.
Parece que nunca, nunca,
aunque me escuche la marcha,
las perdí, ni cuando es día
ni cuando es noche estrellada,
y aunque me vea en las fuentes
la cabellera nevada,
las dejé ni me dejaron
como a hija trascordada.

Y aunque me digan el mote
de ausente y de renegada,
me las tuve y me las tengo
todavía, todavía,
y me sigue su mirada.

Credit

From Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral: Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin. Copyright © 2003 Ursula K. Le Guin. Courtesy of University of New Mexico Press.

Author

Gabriela Mistral, also known as Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga, was the first Latin-American writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Date Published

02/01/2003

Source URL: https://poets.org/poem/my-mountains