The Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957) was the first Latin American writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature (1945). Mistral was born poor as dirt in a mountain village and began her life as a rural schoolteacher, a devotion she carried throughout her celebrated life. Her book Tenura (1924), a pioneering work, was a collection of children’s poetry, filled with tenderness. Mistral is beloved in Latin America, where one finds numerous schools named for her. “To Noel" is from her first published book, Desolation (1922).

In Latin America commercialized Christmas is now everywhere, with stores crammed to the rafters with buzzing and chattering toys of war and glamor. However, the feeling of Navidad still belongs to the children humbly gathering handfuls of grass to offer the camels bearing the Three Kings (Los Tres Magos) on their journey to celebrate the baby Jesus. Navidad lives in the quiet weave of a child’s imagination.

Stephen Zelnick

Noel, el de la noche del prodigio,
Noel of the marvelous night,
Noel de barbas caudalosas,
Noel of the tremendous beard,
Noel de las sorpresas delicadas
Noel of delicate surprises
y las pisadas sigilosas!
and secret footsteps we cannot hear.

Esta noche te dejo mi calzado
This night I leave you my shoes
colgado en los balcones;
set out on the window sill.

antes que hayas pasado por mi casa
Please don’t empty your sack
no agotes los bolsones.
before you pass my house.

Noel, Noel, vas a encontrar mojadas
Noel, Noel you will find
mis medias de rocio,
my stockings are wet with dew,
espiando con ojos picarones
for my mischievous eyes have been spying
tus barbazas de rio…
on the river of your beard.

Sacude el llanto y deja cada una
Take away the crying, leave my shoes
tiesa, dura y llenita,
firm and hard and full,
con el anillo de la Cenicienta
stuffed with toys, Cinderella’s wedding ring,
y el lobo de Caperucita…
Red Riding Hood’s wolf.

Y no olvides a Marta. También deja
And there’s Martha, don’t forget!
su zapatito abierto.
She, too, left her empty shoe.

Es mi vecina, y yo la cuido, desde
She lives next door, and since her mama died
que su mamita ha muerto.
I look after her.

¡Noel, viejo Noel, de las manzanas
Old Noel, Noel of big hands
Rebosadas de dones,
overflowing with gifts,
De los ojitos picaros y azules
Noel of twinkling blue eyes
Y la barba en vellones!…
and beard of streaming fleece.

[Tr. Doris Dana, Selected Poems of Gabriel Mistral, John Hopkins Press, 1961]