I had been told time and again
That locusts were mean insects.
But I hardly could believe it
Of such innocuous, lonely bugs.
These hardened, short-horned grasshoppers
With their orange, angular legs
Seem to stay always in their place
And avoid the world of humans.
They rarely trespass into town,
Except for a lost one or two.
They prefer the vast countryside
Where planted fields can be devoured.
There was that summer afternoon
When we were in the fields out back
Sitting in the willow’s cool shade
And sipping on some mate tea.
My sister and her three children
Jumped to their feet in a panic
When they heard a loud hum and buzz
Coming from somewhere in the west.
Their fearful gaze they lifted up
Toward the boundless blue above.
My eyes too followed heavenward
As I heard the frightful humming.
A thunderous force lurked our way
Casting a veil against the sky.
In a bout of fright, my sister
Prayed frenziedly to God our Lord.
A gregarious swarm of locust
Drove rapidly toward our plots
Painting the whole of the sky black.
How helpless and anguished we felt!
My sister and her three children
Continued to look heavenward.
They looked beyond the locust cloud
and begged for the Eternal’s help.
They plead asking that this dark sea
Of millions of hungry locusts
Would just pass over their humble fields
And head east to the yellow beach.
And as the humming grew louder
We saw not ten meters from us
The thick, black mist of winged insects
Pass us by, heading somewhere else.
So it was, in this simple way,
Through devotion and heart-felt prayer
That the swarm of frenzied locusts
Passed us by heading somewhere else.
In our fields they did not linger;
Perhaps their bellies had been filled
By feasting on other wheat fields
As they cast their trail of bare stalks.
We bowed in prayer to thank the Lord
For having heard our frantic cries.
The locusts had seen our wheat fields
But chose instead to go on by.
translated by Gabriel González
Teresa Rosa Coustés de Ciccio was an Argentine poet born in 1934. She was a member of the Buenos Aires Province Association of Writers as well as the Argentine Association of Writers. She joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as an adult during the 1980s. Around that time she published a poetry collection titled Recopliando recuerdos (Compiling Memories) and two decades later she published her second collection, Memorias en verso (Memories in Verse), both of which bring together personal experiences told through poetry. She passed away in 2018, at the age of 84.
