toponymy

the mole moves 

beneath the skin of the world

perhaps living without a name

perhaps it doesn’t mind

perhaps having few points of reference 

from above

but from below it knows everything

from the inside,

from its scent—

that original orientation—

there it runs through hidden

places without toponyms,

without spoken tongues.

On the surface

the references are different

we no longer remember

the syllables rooted in the earth

vibrating with breath

and pulse.

And as for us late arrivals,

some names

have been shared by the first peoples,

heirs to the original astonished murmurs

that passed through the valleys,

mountains, and high plains

nomadic dreams,

still alive within them,

the magnetic orientation that recognizes

all the continental paths

of the great Chichimeca—

its night skies,

its portals hidden among the hills,

what the wind brings,

the meaning

of the color of the stones,

the temperature of each tree’s shadow,

a dappled dweller of these lands…

They have given us syllables

magnetized

to the vertical soul of this place—

“úha”

“míra úr’i”—

unable to pronounce them well,

yet we cling to these fragments

babbled by our dreams

like verses

of an ancestral song,

shards of what remains

of an enormous vessel

that once held water.

Our thirst betrays

the truth—

we are all

dying of thirst—

—Lorena Wolfman (Translation 2025)