Series: Cibola

The Friar’s Camp: Song Contest (cont’d)

3. Martí­n Medina de Sevilla (accompanying himself on a homemade guitar)

Seven caravels set sail
from Seville, fairest of cities,
plowing seven furrows
on the Guadalquivir.

From each ship arises such
a gust, such storms of wails
& sighs & blowing of noses
that they need no other wind

to carry them out past
the Punta del Perro,
stone muzzle
frozen at point–

dog nose, they’ll need thy direction,
through storm & calm
to find the Isles
of the Bless’d.

And as they drop
below the horizon
the guitarist’s fingers canter
across the strings:

“Tell me, you who nod
or tap your cup,
these poor sinners–
who do you say they are?

Will you wager on
the last Christians, with
the Seven Cities of Antilla
rising from the salt?

Or are they Jews,
fleeing their nests
at the first cock-crow
of the Inquisition?”

__________

the last Christians: As mentioned in “Beginnings,” Spanish ballads of the late Middle Ages assumed that Christians had been driven from the Iberian Peninsula during the initial Muslim conquest in the eight century, and that some of them ended up founding idyllic, Christian colonies in “Antilla.” Thus were the utopian visions of a New World to the west bound up with the Reconquest and national-messianic dreams of recapturing the Holy Land in the east. Such ahistorical (and ageographical) propaganda helped build public support for the forced conversion or expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain in 1492.

The Friar’s Camp: Song Contest (cont’d)

4. Owl-Meeter Shaman

a boy of ten summers
ay, ah! a boy of ten summers
I thought I knew something
when I went off into the hills
to hunt deer

*

my body lies broken
in a desolate place
far from the sound of water
our gray brother circles & keeps going
our shining-eyed companion
looks sideways without stopping

*

every spot
between you & the enemy
that can sleep a band of hunters
I can show
I know every secret thing
in this flowering land

*

what I paid
such a bitter price to learn
look out
it’s free for the asking

__________

As with many native American peoples, for the O’odham, owls are spirits of the dead. But they were not regarded with the kind of invariable dread found elsewhere. An aspiring shaman could learn songs from owl-spirits, who conveyed unique knowledge of both worlds and proffered a dangerous magic that could be turned upon enemies of the tribe. Owl-meeter shamans frequently became masters of war-making magic.

our gray brother, our shining-eyed companion: Traditional O’odham poetic euphemisms for Coyote.

The Friar’s Camp: Song Contest (cont’d)

5. Jose de la Chichimeca, alias Alma de Perro

“Mother, I love
a boy in Jalisco.”
“No, mi hija, no.
For an Indian girl the only thing
is to find an hidalgo with spurs that sing
& five hundred men in the mines.”

“Mother, I love
a boy in Jiquipilco.”
“No, cariña, no.
This gentleman may be a little old
but his teeth & his toothpick are solid gold
& he has three hundred men in the mines.”

“Mother, I love
a boy in Chalco.”
“No, mi unica, no.
Though the doctor wears black & is a little thin
he’s white, & he has a nice wide grin
& a hundred men in the mines.”

“Mother, I love
a boy in Tlatelolco.”
“No, mi vida, no.
You’re too sick to make it out the door–
though it’s nothing this gentleman can’t cure,
& he’s still got fifty men
down in the mines.”

The Friar’s Camp: Song Contest (cont’d)

6. Digger Wasp Shaman (to the accompaniment of a musical rasp)

dirt flies out from under
my folded wings
I stand at the door of my pit house
& turn around four times
looking all over for something
good to drink

*

as hard as I shake my wings
there’s no rattle
I stomp my feet
no drum
I make a nice shelter
& no one comes in
the hole’s too narrow
the caterpillar’s spines are too sharp

*

flying & walking
walking & lifting off
I scour the land
turning turning
make my own dizzying wind

*

I fly behind the sun:
he alone of all beings has
no shadow
I burrow under the rainbow:
she alone of all beings
cannot be approached

*

flycatcher called me a witch
because my medicine is strong
& I can heal
what others cannot
bring wisdom to the careless
humility to the powerful
a goad to all those
who sleep past sunrise

The Friar’s Camp: Song Contest (conclusion)

7. Simón Zopeloxochitl de Texcoco

The hummingbird of day has yielded
to the hummingbird of night.

With a single pair of feathers on his head
he flies on wings of mica
& finds his way with eyes
of yellow quartz.

Unlike his daytime cousin
he doesn’t do battle:
summer nights are short.
Flowers uncurl after sunset just for him.
Pry open the tight
bud of his thorax,
searching out the heart to eat for courage,
& you won’t find
anything that beats:
a maze of dry husks filled with moonlight.
His powdered wings are a recipe for madness.

Listen, my comrades,
the hummingbird’s day is done.
Let us learn to fly by night
& feed on dreams.

__________

The tutelary deity of the Aztecs was Huitzilopochtli, “Left-foot-like-a-Hummingbird.” He was a war/sacrifice/sanguinary nourishment god worshipped throughout the Valley of Mexico. In some parts of highland Mexico and Central America, the hearts of hummingbirds are still fed to boys to give them courage.

“Hummingbird of night” refers, of course, to the sphinx moth.

Reader (13)

Well into the sixteenth century, sleep is one of the prodigal sources of historical documentation, of which the court astrologer is archivist. More difficult to circumscribe but also more important in the dynamics of history are those dreams which transcend the consciousness of the individual. History knows of collective dreams of panic or of hope, of refuge or of action. . . . “Promised lands”, even when they are first dreamt individually . . . are re-dreamt a thousandfold by the community of the convinced.
GEORGE STEINER
“The Historicity of Dreams”

In Zuni dreaming a segment of the dreamer’s self travels outside the body and has experiences in past, distant, or future times and places. . . . [Medicine society members and rain priests] express no fear of dying while dreaming, or at any other time, since their initiation involves the strengthening of their essence, composed of a combination of breath and heart, by projecting part of it into their personal icon (mi’le).
BARBARA TEDLOCK
“Zuni and Quiché dream sharing and interpreting”

Possibly, too, the Zuni have gone too far in attempting to inhibit the development of traits of aggressiveness, initiative, and what we in general call individuality without offering an adequate channeling for such traits. It may be significant . . . to point out in this connection the prevalence in Zuni mythology of the castration-phobia theme. In rape tales the sexual role is reversed and it is the man who is afraid of the woman.
IRVING GOLDMAN
“The Zuni Indians of New Mexico,” in Margaret Mead, ed., Cooperation and Competition Among Primitive Peoples

Esteban/Cibola/Shiwanna

Night falls
& falls: a rain
of obsidian blades,
scalpel & lancet. Black
jaguar’s cough like
a hollow footfall, yawning
harlequin face, tongue curled
to strike: a blood-colored snake.
Orchids’ quicksand throats
overflowing with flies.

The sleeper
forgets to breathe.
The sleeper wakes up
in someone else’s dream,
bending over the dusk-dark
narcoleptic body,
tracing hidden trails
of sickness: sorcerer’s spoor
in the form of aches
& stabbing ulcers, bugs
& bullets of filth.
And the supine figure
slowly reveals
its true dimensions,
boundless–looming up
or abiding as the chest swells,
subsides–& the tobacco
smoke drifts in & out
like a mist, eddies,
spawns a whirlwind.
Spinning over
the darkening desert
the dreamer flies,
circles the highest sierra’s
rain-filled cap,
breaks through
to a hidden glen where
the darkness emits
its own illumination.

A wren
shows him the way
upcanyon
to the spring that leads
(she says) to the seven caves.
The water parts for them,
they trade their feather robes
for the shells
of small brown turtles
at home in the veins
of the earth.
When they mate, they strip
back down to
their human skins–copulate
face to face–but even still
she lays
a clutch of eggs
that hatch into a million
sightless minnows:
a kingdom of the blind
that has no use for a king
or his crystal cup,
his philosopher’s stone.
He grinds it to meal
in a mortar, gives it
his best diviner’s cast
& watches
where it goes,
follows its trail.
A short century later

he comes out on
the bottom of a lake
where two rivers join. And
at last, he rejoices, hearing
flutes & drums,
glimpsing domes
& shimmering towers.

He wanders through fragrant groves,
splashes his face with a fountain’s
astonishing liquor.
Everything is jade
or turquoise, white shell
or cowry, silver, gold,
every house is a palace
in this village of the Jinns.
He finds the dance &
they pause just long enough
to let him join the circle . . .

(To be continued.)

Esteban/Cibola/Shiwanna (conclusion)

The sleeper starts,
gets up, sure he felt a body
creeping under his blanket.
Reaches, finds something sticky,
stirs the fire.

A shape of horror,
the beautiful woman who took
him to bed revealed in
her true shape: a corpse
sleeping without sleep, waking
without waking up,
rising so all the rest
of the flesh drops off,
he strikes the skull from the neck
& the bones fall in a clatter. But
the voice, the girl’s voice
merely grows more shrill,
demanding love,
insisting on the faith
he almost remembers pledging,
threatening Hell in an instant as
he flees the now-
ruined house, literal
ghost town
for the ancestors
of some tribe
who live under a curse in an old story.
He almost remembers it,
how they all pack up & leave
to avoid retribution,
down in the burning land
rebuild their towns:
whole kingdoms of witches, now,
who begin to send their raiding
parties north,
their slavers south . . .

He runs.
He can hardly move.
The level plain keeps turning
into mountains. And all
the while a rumbling
as the skull rolls
after him, baying
despite its disarticulated
jaw, the grin
by now so wide
it can feed on wind,
can suck down every cloud
as it crests the horizon.
It’ll be his fault when the fields
turn to stone, it’s because of him
the corn maidens flee,
the millet beer turned sour,
the butter didn’t come.
The ancestors holler, shaking
their rattles, pounding the floor
with their fat stubby limbs.
Desperate, wild,
he whirls around

& nothing. The shrieks
come from his own throat,
regular as the cries
of a woman giving birth,
sounds without meaning.
No. Sounds too full of meaning
to reduce to words,
coming too fast, rising,
bubbling up
like the foam on beer,
congealing into one
long cry, &
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
sweet jesus! the newborn all
sticky with the waters
of its birth, cold.
Possessed by a single wail
that signifies No.
And at ten
days old still
anonymous, not yet
a finished being.
Plucked from its fitful sleep
& carried out
naked to show
the newly risen
round
red
sun.

Reader (14)

[God] brought light out of darkness, not out of a lesser light; he can bring thy Summer out of Winter, though thou have no Spring . . . . Now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of spring, but as the Sun at noon.
JOHN DONNE
Christmas sermon

Hohokam floodwater cultivators lived from the bounty of storm-driven floods but were simultaneously subject to the unpredictable consequences of uncontrolled flows. As shallow drainages flooded and shifted across alluvial fans, they buried the houses of farmers in the same rich sediments that nourished their fields. . . . Unlike their counterparts in the Old World, the Hohokam were direct gatherers and consumers of desert vegetation, without domestic animals [such as sheep, goats and cattle] as highly efficient, but ultimately destructive, harvesters . . .
SUZANNE K. FISH
“Hohokam Impacts on Sonoran Desert Environment”

Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world.
JOHN THE BAPTIST
Gospel According to John 1:29

Marcos (5)

East: Jerusalem, Mageddo
where Christ will return in glory.
South of East: Peru. México. Kingdoms
condemned to be beautiful & rich.
West of the South Sea:
Cipongo. India. Cathay
of the Great Khan.
Fabled missions of Prester John
& the Apostle Thomas, patron
of all who wrestle with a literal mind.
North: Cí­bola. Now only
some sixteen days off.

And lately the friar hears
it’s just one city, richer than some–
though not as rich they tell him
as Totoneac downriver to the west,
where in the hottest, driest part of
the land one can walk
for a week & never lose sight
of green, well-irrigated fields.
A miracle of the kind
he’s come to expect
from a lifetime in the Rule:
great poverty the most fertile ground
for sustenance, a lodestone
for earthly blessings. See
how all these Indians have fed
& honored him, pressing
to touch his robe, erecting
triumphal arches . . .

In a sudden vision as he kneels
in meditatio, the hated Francisco
hangs again from the cross–but this time
a true imitation, an Indian Christ.
Out of the hole in his side spills
an enchanted waterfall, a rain
of flower petals in every color
including a few he can’t remember
from any rainbow. Four
Indian women weep at the foot
of the cross–a twisted snag, long-dead
except for one thin ribbon of bark
& a single branch of the crown.

But it sings, this tree, it breathes.
It has a heartbeat. One of the women
straightens up & hears it: he thinks
it’s Martha, the one with callused hands,
it hurts her back to kneel so long.
Her face glows, transfigured.
Whatever news she hears will save
her people. This voice no longer like his
speaks with assurance.

(To be continued.)
__________

Totoneac: Historical anthropologist Daniel Reff interprets this otherwise unknown toponym in Marcos’ Account as a reference to the center of Hohokam civilization in the vicinity of modern Phoenix, Arizona.

the hated Francisco: See Marcos (1), from Cibola 24 on.

The images of the enchanted waterfall and the talking tree both come from Yaqui Indian folk Catholicism. (I’m not trying to suggest that Marcos de Niza was ultimately responsible for those motifs, simply that he is beginning to think in a more Indian fashion here.)