"I WAS MY OWN ROUTE"

Hola Reinas,
In celebration of Black History Month, today I am featuring an Afro-Latina poet, Julia de Burgos.

Julia de Burgos- is one of my favorite poets that I studied in grad school.  She is considered by many one of the greatest poets of Latin America.  Julia was born in Puerto Rico on February 17, 1914 and died in Harlem on July 6, 1953.  Writing in the 1930’s through the 1950s,  de Burgos was ahead of her time in grasping connections between history, the body, politics, love, self-negation, and feminism. 

The following poem is the translated version of "Yo Misma Fui Mi Ruta".  This poem speaks about making your own path in life.  

***Please note the word  men refers to mankind***

I WAS MY OWN ROUTE

I wanted to be like men wanted me to be:

an attempt at life;

a game of hide and seek with my being.

But I was made of nows,

and my feet level on the promissory earth

would not accept walking backwards

and went forward, forward,

mocking the ashes to reach the kiss

of new paths.

At each advancing step on my route forward

my back was ripped by the desperate flapping wings 

of the old guard.

But the branch was unpinned forever,

and at each new whiplash my look

separated more and more and more from the distant

familiar horizons;

and my face took the expansion that came from within, 

the defined expression that hinted at a feeling

of intimate liberation;

a feeling that surged

from the balance between my life 

and the truth of the kiss of the new paths.

Already my course now set in the present,

I felt myself a blossom of all the soils of the earth,

of the soils without history,

of the soils without a future,

of the soil always soil without edges

of all the men and all the epochs.

And I was all in me as was life in me…

 I wanted to be like men wanted me to be:

an attempt at life;

a game of hide and seek with my being.

But I was made of nows;

when the heralds announced me 

at the regal parade of the old guard, 

the desire to follow men warped in me,

and the homage was left waiting for me.

--Julia de Burgos (1914-1953)