The Dandelion Blossom
During midsummer, a fluffy seed thought,
"I'm tired of being adrift on the wind."
Presently, a dandelion blossomed in the sun.
On the Nature of Being
A mountain reflected on a still pond.
The mountain had no intention to cast its reflection.
The still pond had no desire to receive it.
Song for the Return of the Sun
At midwinter, an old man from Slana River burst out singing.
He kept singing a song for the sun to return.
After three days, the sun rose and shone brightly on the land.
That evening, his face burned, the old man wrung sunlight from his clothes.
Three Poems
John Smelcer
translated from the Ahtna by John Smelcer
The poems featured here are from the Ahtna Athabaskan language of interior Alaska, where it gets as cold as seventy degrees below zero in midwinter. The son of an Alaska Native father, I learned how to speak Ahtna from every single living elder who spoke the language. For three years, I was the tribally appointed executive director of the Ahtna Heritage Foundation where I worked with elders to produce The Ahtna Noun Dictionary. Today I am the only living tribal member who can read and write in Ahtna—one of the most endangered languages in the world. These poems are among only a handful in existence, the only literature of the culture extant.
John Smelcer is the author of a dozen books of poetry, including Songs From an Outcast, Tracks, and Raven Speaks. His short story collection, Alaskan, edited in part by J.D. Salinger, received a gold medal in the 2011 eLit Book Awards as the best short story collection in the nation. His novel, The Trap, received the James Jones Prize for a First Novel and was named a Notable Book by the New York Public Library and the American Library Association. His stories, poems, interviews and essays appear in over 400 periodicals. Learn more about the author at his website.
