This is not an Irish poem -- but IMHO, it might as well be.

"To an Aztec Daughter" is a traditional poem of the Nahuatl-speaking people of central Mexico. Descendants of those who created the great Aztec civilization, they are an ethnic & linguistic minority in their ancestral lands, often depicted as backward & ignorant peasants whose language & cultural practices ought to be abandoned - or forcibly extinguished.

Yet they survive. & perhaps some part of the explanation lies in the philosophy that underlies this tough & funny poem.  (I wish I could reproduce the Nahuatl original, but I have only ever seen it in translation.)

I'm posting it in memory of my good friend & colleague Patricia Bridges, who died last month after a long, painful battle w/ cancer.

Pat lived in this world w/ a forthright acceptance of its griefs & hardships, never losing the capacity to laugh & to enjoy its gifts as well.  She studied the ways in which our bodies & bones are marked by disease & hard work & trauma...; yet she was warmly, enthusiastically aware of the joys of ordinary life, & loved nothing so much as a party - unless it were the quiet pleasure of turning her wee patch of backyard into a kitchen garden & bird sanctuary.

A native of Missouri, she taught me to appreciate the charming absurdity of illuminated Elvis statues & the foot-stomping exuberance of zydeco music. I could only reciprocate by introducing her to John Blitz. They were together for 20 yrs, having fallen in love more or less at first sight.

Pat taught her last class the day before she died.

I miss her terribly already.

Hear, O my daughter, my child:
the earth is not a good place,
not a place of joy,
not a place of contentment -
it is only called a good place.
A joyful place with suffering,
a joyful place with weariness -
so the elders always were saying.
That we may not forever be weeping -
that we may not die of sorrow,
our creator gave us
laughter
         sleep
              sustenance
                        strength
                                and sexuality.