Magnolias:

an ecopoetic interweaving (short version) 

​​

by Yaxkin Melchy Ramos-Yupari

Translated by Ryan Greene

​

Magnolia flowers:

Kobushi, Shimokuren, Hoonoki, Yoloxochitl

 

Large as human hearts

are the magnolia flowers

     could it be that my heart is blooming?

 

Toward the end of May

the magnolias in Tsukuba bloomed
and a month before we saw the naked trunks

of the kobushi on Mount Hokkyō

 

Magnolias, Magnoliaceae,
form a web of names,

genealogies, tribes, relatives

in America and Asia

 

Magnolias also crossed the Bering Strait

 

Magnolia, Mokuren, Yoloxochitl
in kanji it’s written
  木蓮

“lotus tree”

 

Yoloxochitl in the Nahuatl language means

“flower that’s like the heart”

 

Bodhi lotus
cosmos in motion

emerging from the heart

 

I search in my memories for the threads I interweave:
 

The one called kobushi
blooms after the ume
but before the cherry trees,
brief is the bloom
of the white lotus tree

​

The one called shimokuren
is violet
and I saw it bloom
at the house of the poet Yamao
in Yakushima

​

The one called hoonoki
it’s enormous!
and it’s just now blooming
in the garden of Ichinoya

​

The one called yoloxochitl
I saw carved into an Aztec stone
and I saw it bloom
in Chapultepec
I also tried it
in a sweet drink
of maíz and cacao
that the tianguis vendor called Xochiquetzal

 

Yoloxochitl (Magnolia grandiflora, M. mexicana)

Kobushi (M. kobus)

Shimokuren (M. liliflora)

Hoonoki (M. obovata)

 

Magnolia, the Virgin of Guadelupe’s flower, Tonantzin’s flower

 

The ancient Mexicans told
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún
who recorded it in the Florentine Codex

 

“These flowers come in two types
some are called 

tlacaiolloxochitl,
they’re large and very beautiful,
they’re used by the nobility and artisans.
There are others called
itzcuiniolloxochitl
that, as it’s said,
are very medicinal
and they also drink them in cacao,
which makes it taste very good”

 

You who fill a flower basket
will find these verses:

 

花籠に皆蕾なる辛夷かな

Hanakago ni mina tsubomi naru kobushi kana

 

For the flower basket
they’re all buds
Kobushi flowers

 

in a haiku by Shiki

 

Talking with poets I write this
from, well, my humble studio
I dedicate myself to interlacing
worlds
with flowers

 

Because my heart has grown strong
and because strong, too,

are the flower accounts

of the green quipu.
 

Hanabatake, June 9th, 2020. 

 

*  Quipu: A system of knotted cords used by the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Andes to perform numeric calculations, transmit histories, and record events.