Editorial

Nasim

The other day, I went into the forest looking for chanterelles. There were none, not this dry year, though Poland is still so much greener than the England I’d come from, with its stormless yellow. When I stepped out of the forest into a clearing, into full noon sunshine, I spotted what I thought was a dog, basking. Then I saw another, identical, and it dawned on me that they were wolves. They noticed me, and two or three more came out of the bushes, as if to plainly inform me of the size of the pack.

I hadn’t realised how affected I’d been by the cursory, stereotypical image we have of each animal. I’d assumed that a wolf is grey and something you see in winter. These were largely reddish-brown. They differed from dogs in the way they perceived me but had no immediate sense of how to react. I felt much the same. After maybe ten seconds, I turned around, back into the forest. I took their coming together for a hint to do so, and the whole situation for a wonderful omen.

But what would it mean to be truly loyal to omens? I know I accept them in a Pascalian way – it won’t hurt to find an excuse for positive thinking. Not in this era of foreboding. If they do have more power than I give them credit for, will these machinations ever avenge themselves on the way we enjoy an extracted coincidence or a gratuitous pat on the back to push us forward? I don’t know. I’m open to any scenario. The rational and the esoteric cannot seduce me just by virtue of being rational or esoteric. As an editor, I am trying to be open to other kinds of voices than those I shower with reflexive love. Sometimes you see a dog in a field and discover it’s a wolf. May you, reader, experience some of that, too.

Patrick

I have enrolled in Mexica cosmology school. For a month the small group has been meeting under a tree down by the graveyard to learn how to read the script and talk about the layers of astral symbols that make up the calendar. I joined the class late and still feel totally lost. Every day has its numbered and oriented symbol, within which there are a myriad further symbols: guardian god, guardian bird, night guardian. Today for example, 14th August 2026, is 9-Lizard, its guardian is Huehuecoyotl (Old Coyote), its guardian bird the turkey and Chalchiuitlicue (She of the Jade Skirts) its night guardian. Believing creature that I am, what do I do with even a loose grasp of a way of perceiving that feels distant in language and distant in time, that was wrecked for silver and gold? On Sunday, the class held a Xochipactli where we massaged each other with flowers and herbs: basil, spinach, sage, lemon balm, camomile, mint, and roses. Afterward, the remaining ball of greenery was placed in the recipient’s navel. The one giving the massage gently found their heartbeat there, in the centre of the body, with their fist. I don’t know why this is done but rediscovering someone’s heart undefended like that stirred me. We’d have smelled of the chinampas through the week had we not sweated all afternoon in the temazcal praying with a skin drum and steam. I came out knackered and meek but my imagination, like my body, had been enlivened. Something of what I had been learning over the weeks had made its way in.

I’d been told lots of times that the Mexica symbolic order stems from the accurate and profound observation of the environment and everything in it. But I only knew it was true when I went to the pyramids of Xochicalco (Place of the House of Flowers), where the extraordinary images I’d been looking at in print abounded in the surrounding country. I sat under a mesquite and thought about what I’d been observing over the months; the hills of Tepoztlán, the vultures and lizards, the hummingbirds and dogs. It didn’t matter whether I believed a lizard’s ability to fast meant that those born on a lizard year would live well-fed lives. Much as the Xochipactli transformed sentences and depictions into something shared, sensual and beautiful, the stillness of the ancient site reminded me to trust my own gaze. It made me want to sit in the grass observing and feeling the implications of what I observed, inflected with what little recall and thought occurred proportionally to the immeasurable significance of the place. I looked at the stellae. I clapped my hands and admired the acoustics. I thought of the improbability of my being there. I felt a yearning toward a culture so intent on making colourful, devotional sculpture as a way of communing harmoniously and rangingly with the butterflies. I wanted to live in such a culture.

Just living my day with the mischievous Huehuecoyotl watching over me might also do. By just mentioning him I appreciate two things: that however I might come by them, all meanings passing through my mind have a spontaneous power I mostly fail to acknowledge, let alone confront; that there’s pleasure in the associative dance across meanings these classes have given me, a pleasure that is completely related to poetry.

Huehue

Representation of Huehuecoyotl, Fejérváry-Mayer Codex

It should be obvious that such things also have immediate bearing on questions of land. How we situate ourselves in our heads is in reciprocity with buildings, mountains, sun, and horses. So much that we think is embedded can be renegotiated. It is remarkable just to think that our human world with its deserts and seas is synchronized by the Gregorian calendar and GMT, which we take to be neutral.

Selecting work for Wet Grain, it’s tempting to reach for a thesis on greed, extractivism, and the fight against those who would enrich themselves further at the expense of others and the world. Indeed, what more concrete reminders do we need that this fight is at a wretched moment than the Trump family links to land prospecting in Gaza and Albania? Or of more of the same profiting from weapons manufacturing within government we saw in Bush’s cabinet during the invasion of Iraq? In this issue, we offer poems of protest, poems of political mind, poems of self-enquiry; poems of childhood play and dreams of flight, lyric and etymological wanderings. Our prose displays some of the ‘many worlds’ (we hope some of the many remedial and cohabitant worlds) that humans with their power and imagination imbue land with. We’re doing our best to present them as the many faces of a prism. Along with the numinous breath of the corries and the fellow-walker, Kirsten Norrie notes the fairy link to the Clearances. Yasnaya Elena Gil notes the huge cultural impact of the Zapatistas, beyond their political efficacy up to the present day. May the second-sight shed light on land politics. May the struggle of indigenous land defenders be an example to poets. Differences propelling us toward a fairer, more vital perception of the beallachs and cordilleras.

Nasim Luczaj & Patrick Romero McCafferty
Pietrusza Wola & Tepoztlán