"THE BLOOD OF THE CHIEFTAINS RAN LIKE WATER"
Juan de Alvarado's, "Tonatio", "the Sun",
massacre at the feast of Toxcatl, Tenochtitlan
Florentine Codex, Book xii

July 30, 1995

Moctezoma is drowning
In his own sacred blood
He whispers to Cortés
Who is not there

where is Hannibal?
why doesn't Dante speak to me?
you promised
for excavating my body

Which no longer exists
Only your allergy to gold

Cortés Cortés

You leave me
The resonance of steel
From your luminous hand
The short marriage of life
The inescapable kiss of death
Like a pale pink sky
On ornamental corn
Like quiet scallop shells
Folding each other up
Breathing a little smoke
Into the heart
That coughs
Giving life to the sun

Cortés Cortés

Will my avocado trees pledge
Fealty to the king of snow in
Spain?

Will my daughters faint when
They see the naked blood of
Christ?

Why do you want to make our children
Pink rubella
Like the sonic rage in Alvarado's
Eyes?

While their little fists clutch the
Canal in the sky in their mother's
Breasts
My bones will turn into the dust of
Flowers
Your bones into the dust of
Fever

Your gold will fly like bees
Across the wet grasses of the sea
With the gliding centuries over our graves

Your god is a giant skewer
Looking for mosquitoes who wait a lifetime
For a pious hand to crush them

Cortés Cortés

I die alone without you
Without my own sacred blood
With the heart of a dog that
Licks your white hand

"You have ruined yourselves and me also"

Because studying time and murder
Is the soul of man
The spiteful silence of a dream

Cortés Cortés

"as a song
I was born
as a flower
I will
die..."