This poem is one of a series of poems from my book Lupa and Lamb. They are poems invented on the basis of language research, and they tell the history of women as I would read it, if only more evidence survived. As Monique Wittig wrote, “Make an effort to remember. Or, failing that, invent” (1972). In Lupa and Lamb, Curatrix is our guide, and she runs the Musaeum Matricum where all the evidence we wished had survived is assembled. The Lost Texts poems range from 300,000 BP through to 2011 CE and range through a wide range of times and places.The two photos are of the Etruscan tombs in Tarquinia, Italy. © Susan Hawthorne, 2013.
Lost text: Etruscan: ativu and antinacva.
circa 1500 BCE
Translations
ativu: Etruscan: mother
atinacva: Etruscan: grandmother
lupu: Etruscan: the body lying flat
Notes by Curatrix
This poem has been re-membered from fragments found in an Etruscan necropolis. While it has been possible – after several years of painstaking work – to put the words together (a poet was needed to help in this task), we believe we now have a text as close to the original as possible.
The title of the poem is a reference to the mother [ativu] and the grandmother [atinacva]. These two words are terms of endearment, so it becomes immediately clear that the author/speaker is the child of this mother. As only the maternal relatives appear to be present, we can readily say that the child is a daughter. This is borne out by the term ‘breast to breast’ in the final stanza we have available.
The poem describes a night ritual that takes place following the death of the speaker’s aunt [mother’s sister, sometimes called moster]. The grandmother is regarded as having powers of future sight. An haruspex is a person who can read the entrails of animals.
The wind appears to be an important player in the dispersal of the mother’s sister’s spirit. Not only the wind itself, but the uh-huh singing followed by the playing of wind instruments at dawn.
The word ‘lupu’ has not been translated because there is no easy way to do so in English. Lupu refers to the body, lying flat. It signifies that the spirit, the person who formerly held that body, has now released her grasp and has left the house of the body. The wind instruments are picked up as both a farewell and a reminder to any dawdling spirit that now it is time to leave.
