Category: Poems & poem-like things

Marcos (1) (cont’d)

But today it’s another,
an older ghost that dogs him:
his first convert in the Indies,
the one he baptized Francisco, trailing
a half-pace behind, right foot dragging–
that queer, quick shuffle. Marcos
fights the urge to turn & look.

It comforts him a little to observe
that the anger, the blasphemous
promptings he used to choke back
so often in this man’s company
no longer play hob with his digestion.
Perhaps one day by the grace of God
he’d achieve that firmness
that comes to some with age. How
he’d admired the farmers
in his childhood parish in Provence
who grew to resemble the granite
they spent their lives unearthing,

year by year patiently picking
at their fields, the way
pox victims with untied hands
keep raking their bloody skin.
Whole churches rose on stones
that stopped the plow.

Marcos (1) (cont’d)

The friar’s memories are already
an old man’s memories, farsighted,
graceful in flight for all their ugliness,
returning on weather-tested pinions
to circle some distant spot,
the same carrion

that back in the dripping
forest of the Nicarao would’ve
melted from the bones inside
a week. Here in the parched North
he feels closer

to the high tablelands of Peru, where
a carcass could lie out
for years–the sun coming
day after day to curl around it–
& lose nothing but the coins on its eyes
to some marauding packrat.

Despoblados,
he’ll write in his official account,
but this morning the so-called desert
seems too full for words. He knows
he has only to shut his eyes for more
than six seconds (he counts down

like a professional dreamer descending
the rungs of sleep) to see
again the blood-soaked bodies
stacked like kindling, hear
the hair-raising wails, the laughter
of all those so-called Christians–
Gil Gonzalez’s men–lacking
only pitchforks to make them
spitting images of the devils
in some carnival troupe,
such glee they took
tossing babies onto bayonets,
with such nonchalance
slicing off a hand, a nose, a nursing
breast–milk
& blood conjoined in
a single fountain–

just to test the temper of the blade, they said,

& waxing indignant if the friar persisted
with his mild reproachful queries.
They’d kill us all, these curséd devils,
if we didn’t put the fear of God in them.

__________

back in the dripping forest of the Nicarao: Most of what I’ve written here about the friar’s early career is speculation; there is disagreement about whether his first sojourn in the Americas was in what is now Nicaragua, or Guatemala. It is known that he traveled from the latter location to Peru, where he described some of the horrors of the conquest, in similar terms to what I’ve written here, in a letter published by Las Casas in his Short History of the Destruction of the Indies. Marcos’s broad experience as a traveler in the New World was one of the main factors cited by the Minister Provincial in his selection for a scouting expedition to the Seven Cities (see Reader (3)).

Despoblados: “Unpopulated areas,” i.e. deserts (desiertos).

Gil Gonzalez: The conquistator D’Avila.

Marcos (1)

At midday, looking down from the hills,
you’d barely be able to spot a solitary
figure walking the desert road,
especially one with a robe the color
of mud. But at sunrise, his shadow
marks him like a gnomon. It stretches
far to the west, ripples through clumps
of ironwood & tree cacti, spans
canyons. Someone with keen vision
might even be able to read, in its slight
hesitations and headlong plunges,
something of the cast
of this stranger’s mind.
                                       Or so
Marcos thinks, suddenly self-conscious.

But this new routine works better
than he would’ve thought. His request
to be left alone after breaking camp
for a kind of walking prayer–
balancing matins with the need
to make progress before the heat
forces a halt–has increased
his stature among the Indians
still further. Not a bad shield
against whatever perils might lie
ahead, he muses.
Though in the long run
I’m in far greater danger
from the loss of humility: how
to imitate St. Francis when
the simple villagers crowd in
to finger my habit, eyes shining
with something akin to faith–except
for their perfect ignorance of Christ?

(to be continued)

Reader (3)

Yo envié á Fra. Márcos de Niza, sacerdote, fraile, presbí­tero y religioso y en
toda virtud y religion tal, que . . . fué aprobado y habido por idoneo y suficiente
para hacer esta jornada y descubrimiento, así­ por la suficiencia arriba dicha de
su persona, como por ser doctor, no solamente en la teologí­a, pero aun en la
cosmografí­a, en el arte de la mar . . .

( I sent Brother Mark of Nice, priest, friar, elder and avowed religious, and
in all virtues and religion [being] such, that . . . he was approved and judged
competent and capable to undertake this journey and [mission of] discovery,
both for the aforesaid sufficiency of his person, as well as for being learned, not
only in theology, but also in cosmography, in the art of the sea . . . )

FRA. ANTONIO DE CIUDAD-RODRIGO, Minister Provincial for New Spain of the Order of St. Francis (Certification attached to Marcos de Niza’s
Relación)

*

I council, admonish, and beg my brothers that, when they travel about the
world, they should not be quarrelsome, dispute with others, or criticize others,
but rather should be gentle, peaceful and unassuming, courteous and humble,
speaking respectfully to all as is fitting. They must not ride on horseback unless
forced to do so by obvious necessity or illness. Whatever house they enter, they
are first to say, “Peace to this house.” According to the holy gospel they can eat
whatever food is set before them.

ST. FRANCIS
Rule of 1223 (translation by David Burr)

*

Hay que andar los caminos
por lí­neas de poder
pues cuentan los destinos
que el mundo es una red

(We must walk the roads
by lines of power
for destinations reveal
that the world is a net)

ALBERTO BLANCO
“Eclipse Mexicano” (translation by John Oliver Simon)

Esteban (1) (conclusion)

But the Franciscans & their ilk persist
in praying to an idol, a stern-yet-loving
Father Superior. They style themselves
apostles reincarnate, preaching holy poverty
to the dispossessed. Just like
his step-father the slave trader
piously calling himself a slave
of God. A man who could tear
a child from his mother’s breast,
could keep for a wife
a woman worth
one camel-load of salt.

He spits.
The sand shifts, uncovers the shadow
of a claw, a whip-like tail.
In a land this full of heat & mirage
how much life, how much of reality
moves underground!

Then again–he answers himself–
how much of reality could anyone take
if part of it weren’t concealed?

This is the voice he hears
most often now: Rationem,
a ceaseless shadow-play of judgements.
Evenly pitched, like the drip from
a water clock. Though at times
he feels a pounding at
his temples, as if
from some belligerent emissary
of the Spaniard’s Lord, disinclined
to try & bend his ear. He pictures

nothing so substantial as
a creature with wings, coming
down to perch
on his right shoulder.

Or maybe the left, he mutters
with a shrug. A jinn can take
any shape.
These mountains move.

__________

apostles reincarnate: The first missionaries admitted to New Spain, a year after the conquest of Tenochtitlan, were twelve friars, selected for their alleged resemblance in humility and poverty to Christ’s twelve apostles.

Rationem: The Latin word seems more suggestive here than the English “reason.”

These mountains move: Cf. Matthew 17:20, 1 Corinthians 13:2.

Esteban (1) (cont’d)

He studied Aztec medicine
at Motolinia’s school
across the lake in Texcoco,
learning plants–each one filling
a page with its name alone.
The spellings, he found, were archaic
even to native speakers, translations
told him nothing. In half a year
he just made it past the threshold–
& quit in disgust.

Once deciphered, their skeins
of dead metaphors turned out
to be cunning traps, snares set
for the heart-breath of a patient.
Of a piece with the half-
demolished temples, the deposed
aristocrats nourishing
dreams of reconquest, priests
deprived of their diets of blood
whispering bloody apocalypse.
The peaks ringing the Valley of Mexico’s
beggared bowl reminded him
of nothing so much as
an old man’s ragged teeth.

If mountains didn’t exist,
people would conjure them up:
the need is too great.

Gods give blessings, people feed the gods–
when, at what place
was that ever enough? At Sinai
the universe convulsed into
a singular No: the strongest,
the most unknowable of words.

Don’t use my name with this, you bastard, you murdering slave: Combining the sense of Exodus 3:14 with the import of Exodus 4:24, where God’s mysterious attempt to kill Moses as he re-entered Egypt has been most plausibly explained as a response to the bloodguilt incurred by the act of manslaughter that precipitated Moses’ original flight from Egypt.

Esteban (1) (cont’d)

He’d met a palmer once who told him
that Mount Zion itself–Jacob’s ladder,
the zero point where three religions
intersect–that holiest
of holy spots, he said,
was nothing but a bump.
A little hiccup of earth, overtopped
by forests of minarets.

These mountains at least
don’t require a steady diet of blood
to keep their power: see
how godlike, how impossibly complete
their shifts from red
to brown
to blue–
like actors changing costume.
No, like sorcerers changing shape
with the turn
of an unmoored phrase–
man into jackal, jackal into termite mound–
or rock, or colorful comb
for some maiden to find & carry
home in her hair.
                            The bread
& butter of marabouts, those stories.
La illaha illa’llah might be the All in-
All, but human ears
still crave a bit of spice.

Though Esteban, having read Avicenna
& Plotinus, Maimonides & Dionysius,
neither believes nor disavows
such wonders.
Three years ago he would’ve
owned himself a mystic,
firm in his faith.
Then Mexico:
tableaus of misery, cruelty,
sickness in every shape
& his New World visions faded.
Though he persisted there
as a curandero, the medicine gourd
& his heart-felt songs & prayers
had little effect. In every corner
of New Spain the Indians kept dying.
He felt again like the child
on the beach at Azemmour
learning his letters, scrawling
the lines of holy script
over & over for the waves
to erase. Let the ocean redeem
your imperfect words,
his teacher’s favorite saying–
the one quarter of Creation
that was never cursed.

__________

a palmer: A pilgrim to the Holy Land.

La illaha illa’llah: The pervasive Muslim confession of faith, “There is no God but God.”

curandero: A healer. The term is still widely used in Latin America to denote a Native or mestizo healer, though contemporary evangelical Christians and some devout Catholics may scorn curanderos (other than strict faith healers) as practitioners of witchcraft.

the one quarter of Creation that was never cursed: I.e., by the Biblical Flood. This belief seems to have influenced the ancient use of a fish symbol for the Son of God.

Esteban (1) (cont’d)

Single-file they set out
through the scrub: no choice
but to keep to the narrow road
in this wilderness where everything
wears a thorn. Only up
in the hills can they range
more widely, rambling
through the open woods
that match the image he carries in his head
based on his mother’s stories
of the African savanna.
Outlaws & sorcerers, wild beasts
& other famished beings
make their homes in the bush:
that’s why the people keep
to their towns, risking slave raids
by impoverished kings. As far
as he can figure, the highest
points of earth throughout
his mother’s country
must have been the termite mounds.
That’s where the strongest prayers
were aimed, it seemed–
where the oracles most often preached
the saving blood of roosters.
If mountains didn’t exist . . .

Shouts from the vanguard:
some sharp-eyed hunter
has shot a quail where she sat
motionless on her eggs
in the middle of a thicket:
prelude, he knows, to another
morning of killing, too casual
to call a hunt. These men know
how to fish for rabbits in their burrows
with sharpened sticks,
can run down any deer
so careless as to have left
its tracks in the road.
This he remembers from before,
this traveling light & trusting
in Whomever: the holy way.

Esteban (1) (cont’d)

Men repair straps, tighten tumplines.
The women bend to their grinding
of the day’s cornmeal,
casting a hurried handful on
the sun’s road. Esteban stirs
the dead ashes with his finger:
thirteen days since Marcos
sent me on ahead: this must already be
the 37th day of Lent.
Maundy Thursday.

An unbidden vision of the viceroy
in all his robes & ruffles making
a show of doffing his hat,
cradling the foot of one
symbolic beggar in
his soft white hands,
scattering a few drops of rosewater
on the already scrubbed
& perfumed skin,
while an obsequious Minister
Provincial of the Order
of Friars Minor
crouches at his side.
Holding up a gilded bowl
to guard the carpet.

His face must show it:
the women nearest him
have paused at their metates, eyes
large with concern.
“It’s nothing,” he says,
making the sign for memories.
Then smiling he chants
the hymn for Holy Thursday:
Pange, lingua, gloriosi corporis
mysterium . . .

The plainsong–or his half-serious
version of it–brings him
back to the present.
This cloudless dawn, worth more
than any reverie. These mountains.
Sing, my tongue, the glorious
body’s mystery . . .
__________

the foot of one symbolic beggar: Mutual foot-washing was a prominent part of the traditional celebration of Maundy Thursday, and Western European rulers used to participate in the manner described.

Minister Provincial of the Order of Friars Minor: The head of the Franciscan order for New Spain, the position that Marcos de Niza would subsequently assume, after his return from “Cibola.”

Esteban (1)

At dawn the long-limbed shadow
that all night had blocked a northern
slice of stars

takes on color, changing minute
by minute from black to indigo,
from indigo to ochre,
from ochre to flaming red.
Takes on a kind
of substance, part earth,
part sky: a middle term
without which either side remains
irreducibly apart.

Even in the heat of noon–he muses,
watching the camp come to life–
these desert mountains remain
in a semi-liquid state.
More than mere mirage
or bank of cloud: something
none of the languages he’s learned
can quite encompass.
A substance perhaps closest
to quicksilver, which the alchemists
personify as Mercury,
messenger of the gods.

Or like molten glass:
not much of a stretch, considering
how the mountains resolve
into frozen layers of sand
at one’s approach. He recalls
the view from the slave
quarters in Azemmour,
how the distant hills
hung in the southeast
like the shadow of a smile
on the lips of a not-yet lover.
If mountains didn’t exist,
Esteban starts to murmur–

& breaks off, a sudden recollection
rising into view. When
had his mother ever
mentioned mountains? In all
the boundless lands south
of the Sea of Sand–where mountainous
islands made fortresses, bandit
lairs for the Blue People–
nowhere in that vast savanna
can he remember hearing
the tiniest
rumor of sierras. Tales
of mighty trees, yes–
some fat enough, if hollow, to house
an entire flock of goats, others
with crowns that shaded villages,
tasted the clouds.
But the biggest of trees can’t give refuge
to a persecuted people.

(To be continued)
__________

others with crowns that shaded villages: This is a reference to the kapok tree, revered as a representation or hypostasis of the mythic world-tree in parts of both Africa and Mesoamerica, where the species is known as ceiba.