Classic Poem

On the morning
sky a stone of sun
shows its broad basalt
face on high
at the edge of a pool of obsidian,
and the mouth seems to pour
dribble of human blood
and helianthi of death. . . .

It is the great grindstone
of the solar corn
that makes the bread of days
in the mills of eternity.

Stone of chronologies,
synthesis of years and days,
breathing in silent song
the unconquerable dread
of old mythologies. . . .
On it the flowered and divining months
string pallid alabaster moons
like hollow skulls on the zompantli
in the temple.

About this Table of the Law
the months assemble, mystic, sworded,
in warlike song, murmur of prayer,
as about a King. . . .

And at the close of the belated days
the Nemontani. . . . Five, in masks,
with thistly aloe-leaves!

Days in whose nights the moon
dissolves like turbid chalchuite,
days when shadow-stained the sun gold shines
like tiger-skin, like sunflower. . . .

Like the Tropic other days
are rich and sonorous, and when the jaguar roars
and clouds of parakeets arise
it is as though the forest took to wing.

And the flash of the macaws
sears the sky — clamour and oriflamme —
and gleam and echo seem
flung by the legion of the God of Battles.

And in broad day the quetzels' tails
soar and whirl like Catherine wheels,
like showering stars, flying flowers,
fountains of emerald, gushing, falling
in sprays of willow. . . .

The great anaconda writhes
like sinuous water,
and the thicket quivers
its vast bulk, cold and chill,
inlaid with flowers, encrusted with stars,
in strict geometry.

Other evenings the wild herds of bison
pour across the plain,
their humps rolling like hills
or stormy sea asurge with billows.

In the tall bamboo the macaws screech;
with dreadful crunching,
trailing havoc,
an earthquake plunges through the brake:
the Tapir.

The iguana has changed the sunflower of its iris
and the armadillo fled
to hiding in its carapace.
Huddled in its shell, wound in a ball,
it rolled through the mountain all night and day
and safe to the valley came.

From the azure where it hovered
the pursuing eagle
deemed it dead. . . .
And soon the armadillo, like a holy
desert hermit, rose into the sun.

It escaped the eagle's claw,
but in the end changed into a guitar
beneath a southern
Zapatist's hand
full of patriot love
of the Promised Land,
the armadillo at the foot
of the Idol of the Porch
sings the song.