Beginnings (cont’d)
In the cities on the lake
in Mexico, too, the Aztecs
wax nostalgic for a fabled past–
a story they may have stolen,
like everything else, from those
they sought to surpass: how
their fathers once inhabited
seven caves far to the north
& half the tribe remains there
while the rest wander southward,
shunned by everyone.
When they rise to power
they strip the chronicles of all
competing accounts. This world
needs to be flayed. But in
the songs, the Flower World
beckons from every horizon,
true home of jaguar & eagle.
The knife-winged vulture
casts one eye
toward its former haunts.
__________
Flower World: The chromatic, flower-laden spirit world in pre-Cortezian and 17th-century Nahuatl poetry. Versions of the Flower World also occur in oral literatures in many other Uto-Aztecan languages, including Huichol, Yaqui, Piman (O’odham) and Hopi, as well as some of their neighbors, including Zuni.
jaguar & eagle: Totems of the two, main warrior societies of the Aztecs.
knife-winged vulture – Knife-wing, in Zuni cosmology, is the guardian of the Zenith.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Cibola 1
- Cibola 2
- Cibola 3
- Cibola 4
- Cibola 5
- Cibola 6
- Cibola 7
- Cibola 8
- Cibola 9
- Cibola 10
- Cibola 12
- Cibola 13
- Cibola 14
- Cibola 15
- Cibola 16
- Cibola 17
- Cibola 18
- Cibola 19
- Cibola 20
- Cibola 21
- Cibola 22
- Cibola 23
- Cibola 24
- Cibola 25
- Cibola 26
- Cibola 27
- Cibola 28
- Cibola 29
- Cibola 30
- Cibola 31
- Cibola 32
- Cibola 33
- Cibola 34
- Cibola 35
- Cibola 36
- Cibola 37
- Cibola 38
- Cibola 11
- Cibola 40
- Cibola 41
- Cibola 42
- Cibola 43
- Cibola 44
- Cibola 45
- Cibola 46
- Cibola 47
- Cibola 48
- Cibola 49
- Cibola 50
- Cibola 51
- Cibola 52
- Cibola 53
- Cibola 54
- Cibola 55
- Cibola 56
- Cibola 57
- Cibola 58
- Cibola 59
- Cibola 60
- Cibola 61
- Cibola 62
- Cibola 63
- Cibola 64
- Cibola 65
- Cibola 66
- Cibola 67
- Cibola 68
- Cibola 69
- Cibola 70
- Cibola 71
- Cibola 72
- Cibola 73
- Cibola 74
- Cibola 75
- Cibola 76