Born from dreams, from stones that speak, from ordinary words (found not in the dictionaries but in the marketplaces), from the wrinkles of a grandmother’s face, from the laughter of the rain, the poems of Humberto Ak'abal bring us to a different way of listening to the world. With a simple and direct touch, Ak'abal–writing in Maya K'iche–gathers the beauty, pain, sadness, and anger that is felt in contemporary Guatemala. His poetry, presented here in Spanish and English, also provides a bridge across a cultural divide that has plagued the Americas since the conquest, giving Indigenous peoples, who have lived in the shadows for centuries, a voice.

Although there have been Indigenas writing in Spanish since the colonial era, receiving little attention until the past few decades, they remain largely unknown in English-speaking North American and European cultures. In the Courtyard of the Moon makes a profound contribution to correcting this injustice for scholars and lovers of poetry anywhere.