Singing with Elephants
VIKING
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York
First published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2022
Copyright © 2022 by Margarita Engle
“Animals”/“Animales” in The Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral translated by Ursula K. Le Guin, printed with permission granted by University of New Mexico Press.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
Ebook ISBN 9780593206713
Cover art © 2022 by Oriol Vidal
Cover design by Jessica Jenkins
Edited by Liza Kaplan
Design by Monique Sterling, adapted for ebook by Andrew Wheatley
This is a work of historical fiction. Apart from the well-known actual people, events, and locales that figure in the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales, or to living persons, is entirely coincidental.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
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CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Poetry Is a Dance
Musical Elephants Are Like
One Day
I Don’t Belong Here
If Only the Writer
Perhaps She Can See
Me Encantan Todas Las Bestiecitas
Language Is a Mystery
Child of the Ark
My Wishing Window
We Moved to California
The Only Good Luck
Confession
Gratitude
Choices
The Daily Dictionary
Today, La Poeta
Poetry from Animals
Memories Follow Me
At Least It’s Summer Now
Each Time I Visit the Poet
Gifts
Half a Gift
Cruelty
Kindness
Some Days Feel Stormy
Window Wishes
Skills I Have Not Perfected Yet
¡A Bailar!/To Dance!
Conversation with an Old Poet
Conversation with Myself
Some People Have Families Made of Companions
Waves of Wishes
Conversation with My Parents
Conversation with My Teenage Sister
Wondering
Reassurance
Impatience
Between Sky and Earth
Metaphors
Similes Are Different
Astonishing Words
The Shade Beneath Trees
My Island of Whistling Bird-Walkers
When Wishes Grow
Everything Begins to Make Sense
La Poeta Famosa
Excitement
Not Completely Bilingual Yet
The Library Is a Forest
Conversation with a Librarian
Invitation
Instructions for Meeting a Pregnant Elephant
Elephant Anatomy
All Sorts of Poop
When Elephants Sing
Changes
My Tiny Bilingual Poema for Gabriela Mistral
Will My Verses Ever Be Powerful?
Breath
The Scent of a Captive Elephant
The Elephant’s Eye
Entranced
The Future Is a Question Mark
The Present Is Winged
Elephants Hear with Their Feet
Voices
When I Set My Musical Memories Free
The Poet’s Stories Are Riddles
My Stories Are Never Finished . . .
Elephant Serenade
Singer
Observer
Listener
Why?
How to Raise an Elephant Baby
Eager
Wordless
A Fable About an Elephant’s Secret
Shadowy
Treetops
Ode to My Poetry Teacher
Mystery
Tragedy
Xenophobia
The Poet’s Suitcase
Wave After Wave
Angry
Out Loud
After a Tragedy
Ronda
An Elephant Baby Will Be Born Today!
Spying
An Elephant’s Ordeal
Natural Wonders
Suspicious
Elephant Needs
Shut Up, Creep
Dreams of Humming
Familia and Other Questions
No One Is Home
Twin Elephants
Where to Next
No
The Names of Pairs
Trouble
Refuge
Conversation with an Elephant Family
Catastrophe
Thief
Guilt
Singing Our Sorrows
Grief
Size
Starlight
Kindness to Animals
Blaze
Libraries Aren’t Always Perfectly Quiet
Letters
Not Enough Practice
Comforting a Heartbroken Mother and Brother
Movement
A Dog’s Nose
Everything Is Hidden
Discovery
Liar
Conversation with Carlitos
I’m Too Stunned to Speak
Carlitos Explains
Search and Rescue
Isolation
Imprisoned
Friends?
Laughter Is an Open Gate
Singing Session with a Canine
Planning Session with Humans
Planning Session with Elephants
How to Write a Petition for Justice
Petition from a Family
The First Signatures
The Next Signatures
What If?
Slow Progress
Neighborhoods
Friendship
Belonging
At the End of Each Day
Children and Animals Belong Together
In Praise of Humming
Elephant Intelligence
Floating
Back on Earth
Resonance
Answers Arrive
An Entire Lifetime
The House of Blaze
Out Loud
Next
Together
Protest March
We Round a Corner
Singing with Elephants
When Elephants Dance
Delivery
My Voice
Front P
age
Perseverance
The Poet Packs Her Suitcase
My Future Is Blurry
Reunited
Audience
Celebration
New Beginnings
Author’s Note
Gabriela Mistral’s Poetry for Children
Further Reading
Acknowledgments
About the Author
For teachers
and future teachers
with gratitude, admiration, and hope
POETRY IS A DANCE
of words on the page.
These poems are a story
about the summer
I learned
how to twirl
and leap
on paper.
It was the summer when I met a famous poet
and a family of musical elephants.
Until then, all I could do was wish
like a caged songbird
wordless
wistful
wishful . . .
SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA
— 1947 —
MUSICAL ELEPHANTS ARE LIKE
mountains with windy whispers,
the sea when it roars or chants a lullaby,
tree branches that clack like maracas,
and every animal that opens its mouth
to howl, bark, or chant
about the freedom
to walk, walk, walk,
rejoicing in the sheer joy
of touching
green earth
with rhythmic feet
and dancing
minds.
ONE DAY
I’m rhythmically walking, walking, walking,
with various creatures on comically tangled
leashes, when we reach the garden of a cozy-looking house
right across from the high school, and there, kneeling
as if in prayer
is a stranger.
She’s old, but her face looks strong.
I wonder if my own dark eyebrows
are as winged as hers
ready to rise
and fly
like feathers.
Pleased to meet you, I say in English.
She glances up.
This is my giant wolfhound Flora
and my miniature goat Fauna, but the piglets
and ducklings are just temporary patients
from our veterinary clinic
where my parents are the doctors
and I’m almost a sort of eleven-year-old nurse
because I feed, clean, pet, cuddle, walk, walk, walk,
and sometimes I even help with unusual animals
at a wildlife zoo-ranch
where adventurous movies
are often filmed.
I’m going to be a healer one day . . .
My voice
trails away
when I see her frown
and glance down at her notebook
and realize—
I have disturbed her.
I DON’T BELONG HERE
The stranger studies me.
What is she thinking?
Is she wise?
Could we be friends?
I wonder
whether
I’ve said
too much,
made
too many
mistakes
in inglés.
I wonder . . .
Would this woman care
if I told her
about the girls at school
who make fun
of me for being
small
brownish
chubby
with curly black hair barely tamed
by a long braid?
Would she care that the girls at school
call me
zoo beast
when my clean clothes
smell a bit like animals?
Would she care that the boys call me
ugly
stupid
tongue-tied
because my accent gets stronger
when I’m nervous, like when
the teacher forces me to read
out loud?
I wonder.
IF ONLY THE WRITER
could speak my true language.
She does!
Te gusta la poesía, she says,
telling me that I like poetry
Her español is rhythmic like a song,
slower than mine, and fancier,
with words that sound like they
belong in a book, which is what
she says she’s writing—
a volume of verses.
Voy a adivinar, she says—I’m going to guess.
Vienes para aprender a escribir la poesía.
You’ve come to learn how to write poetry.
Should I answer honestly?
I simply shrug, embarrassed to admit
that I came for many reasons,
to see who
she is
and what
she’s doing,
and because I’m
lonely.
PERHAPS SHE CAN SEE
inside my heart.
Because she doesn’t tell me to leave,
just says
I will teach you
like I haven’t bothered her at all,
like it’s no big deal I’m here.
I tell her my classmates say
I ask too many questions.
Ay, no, she insists—no importa,
she will teach me a bit about writing.
Poetry is like a planet, she says,
each word spins
orbits
twirls
and radiates
reflected
starlight.
If you want to write, you have to observe
movements, and absorb
stillness.
She smiles, and reaches to pat Flora’s
huge head, which only encourages my sloppy dog
to lick her hand, while Fauna just does what goats
always do, nibbles on the edges of the notebook,
and the hem of la poeta’s dress, and a button
on her blouse.
I pull all the animals away
before they can start eating her hair.
ME ENCANTAN TODAS LAS BESTIECITAS
I love all animals,
the poetry teacher says.
I smile, because animals
are my family’s whole life,
now that my grandma
is gone.
I wonder if the poetry teacher
would like to see my parents’ clinic
after my poetry lesson.
Do you write in English or in Spanish?
I ask.
I tell her I’ve been trying to
practice English for school,
but Spanish feels like home.
Una mezcla, la poeta suggests,
let us mix our languages together
like emotions that swirl and blend
in a pot of paint, azul y rojo
becoming purple, amarillo y azul
turning to green.
LANGUAGE IS A MYSTERY
After a whole year in California,
español is still the only way of speaking
that feels completely natural to me,
letters like ñ and rr
hidden inside my island-mind
where words are so much more alive
than in my incomplete
i
mmigration-mouth.
The poet switches to inglés
just to help me—but animals
don’t recognize my effort
to make sense
of letters like a y
that sounds like my ll
and an h that is not silent
and a k that does not even exist
in Spanish—so todas las bestiecitas
begin to bark, bleat, quack, and grunt
a humorous animal opera
so ridiculous and endearing that for the first time
since Abuelita’s funeral, I actually chuckle
and laugh out loud—a genuine
carcajada, a guffaw!
How wondrous it feels
to remember that laughter
has no language, and can cross
any boundary line,
even the wavy ones
between species.
CHILD OF THE ARK
Each time I leave our clinic-house
with assorted creatures on leashes,
my big sister, Catalina, says I look
like a refugee from Noah’s Ark.
I call her Cat, and she calls me Olivia—
a mythical saint who never
actually existed; but Abuelita loved to imagine
that she was a real woman who carried
an olive branch for peace—
but to everyone else, I’m Oriol.
My bird name
musical and sweet,
is one I chose
for myself, long ago in Cuba,
when
I knew who I was
and how
to speak.
MY WISHING WINDOW
Now, here in this foreign country
with Abuelita above me in Heaven,
all I have left that belonged to her
is a little blue glass statuette
a figurine
an elephant
that sparkles
like starlight.
When she gave me el elefante,
she told me to put it on my windowsill
where its curved trunk could reach up
and catch good luck.
Each morning and evening,
I whisper my wish to move back
to Cuba,
and I wait . . .
WE MOVED TO CALIFORNIA
because Abuelita
needed a specialized diabetes