PENDULUM CAN I EAT THIS?

Tell me where you come from, brunette

Tell me where you come from, salty.

She’s my aunt Guadalupe

That I saw yesterday

When she came from visiting

A healer from Cuellar (Segovia).

Before, due to her stomach illness

(Indigestion, acidity, ulcer, gastritis)

She had visited

A healer from Valencia

Another from San Juan de Luz, in France

And another from Padua, Italy

Watching from the trains

That took her to these places

How the fields and houses danced

Near the tracks as they passed

And the sun playing

In the shine of the rocky ground

Next to the rivers of the mountains.

She believed in the magic of healers.

That’s why she went from one healer to another

Telling her troubles to the cows

That she saw grazing in the first poplar grove

Next to the healers’ house

Chewing, chewing

Next to the flutes of a grassland

Low, swampy ground

Covered with wild straw and other species

Typical of humid places.

Among them

The healer of Cuellar

Was the one who, for her, did the greatest good

Because he gave her a precious pendulum

To which, held with the same hand

With which we write

Between the thumb and index finger

We must ask it

Placing it on top

Of the three daily meals

(Lunch, snack, dinner):

-Pendulum, can I eat this?

If the pendulum turns to the left, it’s no.

If it turns to the right, it’s yes.

So, my aunt Guadalupe

Enlivening the teapot, the pot and the plates

Going on and on with the pendulum

Began to tear up

All the diets she had on paper

And meal plans

To take them, later, to the dumpster

Forgetting all her sorrows

Even though her stomach hurt

Like that cow of the Galician lady

From Xermade, in Lugo

Who only said to her

When she went to visit her: Moo.

-Daniel de Culla