Divine Plan

Elvira Hernández
Translated from the Spanish by Daniel Borzutsky & Alec Schumacher

You incriminated yourself with us, Lord                                     You began by making us dirt to continue                                     making us dust                                     from the beginning you filled us with clay                                     without giving us the promised touch, the breath.You stabbed us richly, from the very first day                                                      You snitched us outthat’s been the mark of your kingdom, the stigmaon us the workers in the Edenic bunker.                                                                        Without salt or water                                     those of us build ladders to the empyrean                        smashing our faces on the stonesunder the eternal smile of the guardian angels                                                      the Pretorian guard of Order.You incriminated yourself to us, Lord                        your robotics has a limit, your credit anxiety                                                                                           —the Master CardWe will not settle our account, not with your Son, not with his Mother                  not with the Tribunals—the Holy Spirit—Give us back the body, Sir, renounce that spirituality those                                                                                           profits                      the horrifying genetics of making us human                                                                                           and erasing us.                  Don’t throw us away or into your own imagewe want to be men and women with burning skin with intimateskin shining like a constellation of desperate seas.Let the kingdom of love come to us                                     our brothel in this world of Yours, this gallows                                     a chamber where you can breathe. Plan DivinoSe acriminó con nosotros, Señor                                     comenzó por hacernos mugre para seguir                                     haciéndonos polvo                                     nos llenó de barro desde el comienzo                                     sin darnos el toque prometido, el soplo.No ha estoqueado de lo lindo, desde el primer día                                                      nos ha soploneado                  ese ha sido el signo de su reino, el stigmaa nosotros los trabajadores en el bunker edénico.                                                                        Sin sal ni agua                                    los que edificamos escalas al empíreo                  rompiéndonos la cara con las piedraspara la sonrisa eterna de los ángeles custodies                                                      la guardia pretorial del Orden.Se acriminó con nosotros, Señor                   su robótica tiene un límite, su ansiedad de crédito                                                                                            —el master cardNo arreglaremos cuenta ni con su Hijo, ni con su Madre                  ni con las Tribunales —el Espíritu Santo—Devuélvenos el cuerpo Sir, renuncie a la espiritualidad esa                                                                                           la ganancia                                    la genética horrorosa de hacernos personas                                                                                           y borrarnos.                  No nos tire a la chuña ni a su semejanzaqueremos ser hombres y mujeres con la piel incendiada la pielÍntima brillando como una constelación de mares desesperados.Que venga a nosotros el reino del amor                                    nuestra casa de cita en este mundo Suyo, el cadalso                                    un reservado donde poder suspirar.

Feature Date

Series

  • Translation

Selected By

Share This Poem

Print This Poem

Black-and-white portrait headshot of Elvira Hernandez

Elvira Hernández, pseudonym of María Teresa Adriasola, is a Chilean poet, essayist, and literary critic. She is one of the most important voices of contemporary poetry in the Southern Cone and the Chilean neo-avant-garde. Some of her most important works include: ¡Arre! Halley ¡Arre! (Giddy up, Halley!), La bandera de Chile (The Chilean Flag), Santiago Waria, and Pájaros desde mi ventana (Birds From My Window). She is the recipient of the 2018 Jorge Tellier National Poetry Award, the 2018 Pablo Neruda Ibero American Poetry Award, and the 2024 Chilean National Literature Award.

Color headshots of Daniel Borzutsky (top) and Schumacher (bottom)

Daniel Borzutzky is a poet and Spanish-language translator from Chicago. His most recent books are The Murmuring Grief of the Americas (2024), and Written After a Massacre in the Year 2018 (2021). His 2016 collection The Performance of Becoming Human, received the National Book Award. Lake Michigan (2018) was a finalist for the Griffin International Poetry Prize. His most recent translations are Cecilia Vicuña’s The Deer Book (2024) ;and Paula Ilabaca Nuñez’s The Loose Pearl (2022), winner of the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. His translation of Galo Ghigliotto’s Valdivia received the American Literary Translator’s Association’s 2017 National Translation Award, and he has also translated collections by Raúl Zurita, and Jaime Luis Huenún.

Alec Schumacher is Associate Professor at Gonzaga University. His research interests are Latin American poetry, translation, and avant-garde poetics, with publications focused on Chilean poets Juan Luis Martínez and Elvira Hernández. He has translated works by Jorge Arbeleche, Elvira Hernández, Luis Correa-Díaz, and Carlos Cociña. His translations and co-translations have been listed for several awards, including the National Translation Award, the Book Critics Circle Award, the Griffin Poetry Prize, and the Sarah Maguire Prize.

Black with with detail cover of BODIES FOUND IN VARIOUS PLACES

ASTERISM

PUBLISHER

Bodies Found in Various Places: The Selected Poems of Elvira Hernández
Cardboard House Press

Phoenix, Arizona

  • Featured book

The first anthology of Elvira Hernández’s poetry translated into English brings the award-winning contemporary Chilean poet's work of love, survival, persistence, disturbance, amazement, and delight to a new audience.

Elvira Hernández has occupied a marginal position in the Chilean poetic scene for decades, her quiet but mordant voice looking inward and outward, ironizing the circumstances of life that have brought us to this critical point in society. As recently as 2018, her work has become more visible after receiving the Jorge Teillier National Poetry Award (2018), the Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Award (2018), and the National Literature Prize (Chile 2024). With this belated recognition of her work has come an interest in studying her unique poetic language, with new critical books forthcoming from Spanish and Latin American publishers. Bodies Found in Various Places collects poems written from 1981-2016, providing readers with a curation of texts that show why Hernández is one of the most vital Latin American poets writing today.

"Elvira Hernández wrote her poem 'The Chilean Flag' after she herself had been detained and tortured by the dictatorship for not complying with its lies. While Chileans were trained to look the other way, to go quiet by this terror, Elvira Hernández wrote a poem that could not be printed. Yet, the poem escaped like a prisoner and began circulating in Xeroxes, from hand to hand, until ten years later it was finally printed in Buenos Aires. In Elvira Hernández’s poetry, each line restores the right of words to speak. Each word becomes a healer, a prayer for a wounded, enslaved humanity forced to obey the rule of profit over life."
—Cecilia Vicuña, author of Spit Temple

Poetry Daily Depends on You

With your support, we make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.

DONATE NOW