JORGE COCOM PECH (Mexico, Maya people, 1952)

The house of your soul

Your name is the house of your soul
there live your parents and grandparents.
In the millenary house,
home of your remembrances,
your soul remains.

Because of this,
do not cry over the death of your body
nor do you cry for the death of your soul.
your body,
Remains in the face of your children:
your soul,
stay forever in the brilliance of the stars.

Translation by Nicolás Suescún

Jorge Miguel Cocom Pech was born in Calkini, Campeche, Mexico, in 1952. Poet, narrator, essayist and professor in Maya language and Spanish. He made studies of Communication Sciences, Pedagogy, agronomy and sociology. From 2002 to 2005, he was president of The Directive Council of Writers in Indigenous languages, A. C: national organization that gathers poets, narrators, playwrights and essayists from Mexico. His book Muk’ult’an in Nool, Grandpa’s secrets, bilingual text maya-spanish, has been translated into French, Italian, Serbian, Romanian and Arabic. He has participated in encounters, congresses and festivals related to indigenous cultures in Canada, United States, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, Chile and Venezuela. The literary critic Alejandra Flores, from the extinguished newspaper La Voz del Caribe de Cancún, Quintana Roo in regards to the book Grandpa’s secrets says: “Few books get to make poetry from its first pages, few that hold your hand and take you through mystery paths and gift you with a metaphore in every step, revelations that appear in a natural way and however are a result of a wisdom of life. Cocom Pech, owner of a pen that recognizes the beauty of the concept is at the same time a crafted writer, a word hunter that measures with certainty the emotional effect of a phrase…” In the prologue to the book Grandpa’s secrets, Miguel León Portilla emeritus professor of The Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico points out: “The Mexican literature- and I dare saying world literature- enrich themselves with productions such as this. Beyond any kind of magic realism, with its metaphors, parallelisms and evocations, it reenacts into the present, the wisdom and beauty of the ancient word transformed into a torrent of life. The Chilean writer Jaime Valdivieso in regards to Cocom’s Pech work points out: “from the very first reading he made from his book in the Poetry Workshop of Writers in Indigenous Languages in Temuco, Chile I was profoundly moved by his narrations. Not only do we see there the millenary wisdom of his ancestors and of a whole people but the mastery, he has been able to transfer into writing, the ethical and philosophical message of his grandfather. In a sober prose, without any kind of tinsel besides the one corresponding to the similes and metaphors typical of poetry with which the primitive people see and conceive nature, man and cosmos (poetry is the language of a primitive people, Heidegger says), gives us a text not only of great testimonial anthroplogical and ethical value, but at the same time an autonomous universe of extraordinary beauty, without losing that cadency and spontaneity typical of the oral tradition.