Another Land Raised Me

Another Land Raised Me

By Elizabeth Wood

This land birthed me

It heard my first cry, it saw my first step

It brought me into being

It introduced me to a world It gave me a face, a name, a place

It wrote them all down on a piece of paper

And by those it tries to claim me

What could be more official?

But this land did not raise me

Another land raised me

It took me in and made me its own

It nurtured a child to mature and grow

It watched me step into myself

It adopted me

Am I by that any less its child than those it birthed?

The rolling hills, the sun-dried grass, the open sky

The cobbled streets, the tile roofs, the ancient stones

They claim their land: We have always been here

I have not

But I claim them

Does that make them any less mine?

¿Cómo explicar la conexión del alma con la tierra?

¿Cómo explicar que lo que un día fue mío me es ahora extraño, extranjero?

Que los robles, las aceras, las ardillas, las casas de ladrillo

Son tan míos como los cráteres de la luna

Que nuestra conexión se ha perdido

Que no deseo encontrarla

Y que lo que es ahora mío

Son las colinas, la sequía, los castillos, las calles empedradas

That the Stars and Stripes, the American dream

Belong to me no more than to any alien

Lo mío es sobremesa, humor negro, vergüenza ajena, la ley del mínimo esfuerzo

De tal palo tal astilla

But the mother that I am like

Is not the land that birthed me

But the one that raised me

Elizabeth Wood was born in Pennsylvania, USA, but grew up in Sigüenza, a small town tucked between hills in central Spain. Currently she is a PhD student in Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on vowels and prosody in K’iche’, a Mayan language of Guatemala. Website: https://elizabethwoodlinguist.wordpress.com/