Category: Poems & poem-like things

Reader (5)

El negro les hablava siempre y se imformava de los caminos que querí­amos
saber. Passamos por gran numero y diversidades de lenguas. Con todos ellas
Dios nuestro Señor nos favoresíió, porque siempre nos entendieron y les
entendimos. Y ansí­ preguntámos y respondí­an por señas como si ellos hablaran
nuestra lengue y nuestros la suya . . . Y desta manera dexamos toda la tierra [en
paz] y dixí­mosles por las señas, porque nos entendí­an, que en el cielo aví­a un
hombre llamávamos Dios . . . (The black man was always conversing with
them, gathering whichever information we wished to know concerning the
roads ahead. We passed though a great number and variety of languages. With
all of them our Lord God favored us, since we invariably understood them, and
they understood us. And thus we queried, and they replied, through signs, just
as if they’d spoken our tongue and we theirs . . . And in this manner we left the
whole land [in peace], and told them in signs–since they understood us so
well–that in the sky there was a man we called Dios . . . )
ALVAR NUÑEZ CABEZA DE VACA
Naufragios (Valladolid ms.)

Your lordship is to call to mind how this Negro which went with frier Marcos
was wont to weare bels, & feathers on his armes & legs, & that he caried plates
of divers colours . . .
FERNANDO DE ALARCON
Relación (translated by Richard Hakluyt in The Principal Navigations)

I began to think of the soul as if it were a castle made of a single diamond, or of
a very clear crystal . . .
SAINT TERESA OF AVILA
Interior Castle

Shiwanna (1) (conclusion)

These swallowers of men plant prayer sticks

One who denies death

As the boy draws back, his vision expands –
A line of these cross-boned prayer sticks

the sorcerer loads his reed
                                         & here
the slow toneless voice of Datura halts.

The priests, watching intently, see
the boy’s eyes under his lids
float upward & lie motionless
like minnows in a poisoned spring.

His uncle shouts for the antidote,
blows it up his nostrils, pumps his chest.
At last they feel his heart flutter
& he coughs, once, twice, three times

& ends with a sigh. Time
to sing him back, to begin
four days & nights of healing.
Let the Twins mutter

in their six grottoes, in their seven caves.
Let them howl.
They’re war gods: they can wait.

__________

prayer sticks: As mentioned earlier, Zunis and other southwestern peoples use small effigies, fashioned by almost every adult male at set times and for set purposes, instead of sacrifices. These consist of willow wands from a hand span to half an arm’s length in height, tied with feathers of various birds and planted on the outskirts of the village with appropriate prayers.

war gods: this is in fact the term preferred by modern Zunis themselves when speaking in English about the carved wooden icons of the divine twins. They attribute the theft and subsequent misuse of many of these icons by museums and collectors as a primary cause for the world wars and other disasters of the 20th century.

Shiwanna (1) (cont’d)

The rain priest of Hawikuh has
one nephew just past his seventh winter,
his youngest sister’s child & the one
he favors to succeed him. At his suggestion

they bring the boy into the kiva,
turn him naked in a circle
& sixteen pairs of eyes can find
no mark or scar. They ask him

Will you do this for the People, for Shiwanna?
It’s dangerous! But he says Yes.
They turn him to face each of the six
cardinal points, including zenith

& nadir, have him lie down on
a deerskin pelt & drink the acrid
tea of sacred Datura.
His breath slows, goes south:

A place where the mountains smoke
he murmurs.

Corpses bob in every lake & river

an albino’s ensorcelled eye

Shiwanna (1)

From their guard posts in the hills
around Shiwanna, the Twins
raise such a clamor

that the brotherhood of holy warriors,
gathering in haste, divides &
divides. Factions of three, two,

one angry voice raised against the others.
The Ahayuta–immortal teens–are always
for the extreme: the lightning strike,

the tornado, the hundred-year flood.
Their rancid breath boils in their throats,
offspring as they are of sun & foam.

But the Uwannami, the longbeards,
breathe from the bottomless ocean.
Their tobacco reed scrawls a complex
message across the sky.

From every town the rain priests gather
in their grand kiva, four walls in
from the sun. Tenatsali, six-hued
flower, herb with seven faces,

how have you passed your days?
The Word Priest inhales from the blossoms
as if they were open palms. We seek
direction. And Tenatsali in turn

calls for Datura:
Take a boy with unblemished skin,
between his first & second initiations.
Guide him to the edge of death.

(To be continued)
_________

I’ll try and keep notes to a minimum for this section; over-explication could suck the life out of it, I think.

Datura: The scientific name of this highly poisonous, psychotropic plant seems somehow more fitting than the common English name, jimsonweed.

Reader (4)

In all the land and kingdoms of Cí­bola, which includes many regions,
constituting a great country more than three hundred leagues across, reaching
all the way to the South Sea, all of it quite populous and containing an
infinitude of nations, there is not a single idol or temple to be found; they have
naught but to adore God in the sun and in springs of sweet water.
BARTOLOMÉ DE LAS CASAS
Apologética Historia Sumaria

The Zuni polity would appear to be heterarchical, indicating a lack of
unidimensional hierarchy and a presence of multiple and noncongruent sources
of power . . .
KEITH W. KINTIGH
“Leadership Strategies in Protohistoric Zuni Towns”

In the first period of the conquest . . . marvels were attributed to America’s
plants. . . . For the Indians, herbs speak, have sex, and cure. It is little plants,
aided by the human word, that pull sickness from the body, reveal mysteries,
straighten out destinies, and provoke love or forgetfulness. These voices of
earth sound like voices of hell to seventeenth-century Spain, busy with
inquisitions and exorcisms, which relies for cures on the magic of prayer,
conjurations, and talismans even more than on syrups, purges, and bleedings.
EDUARDO GALEANO
Memory of Fire, Vol. I: Genesis, translated by Cedric Belfrage

The living human or animal body is referred to in Zuni as the shi’nanne (literally ‘flesh’), while the life force, essence, breath, soul, or psyche is the pinanne (literally ‘wind’ or ‘air’). So, although breath is ultimately lodged in the heart and is thus a body-soul, under certain circumstances – such as during trancing, curing, singing, and dreaming – it can behave as a free-soul and leave the body. . . . Although the pinanne . . . arrives at birth and departs at death, it is never solely possessed by the individual during his or her lifetime. Rather, it remains closely connected to the sacred power suffusing the ‘raw’ world from which it came and because of this constant contact it acts as a strong moral agent.
BARBARA TEDLOCK
“Zuni and Quiché Dream Sharing and Interpreting”

Marcos (1) (conclusion)

He took him down, the Indian’s bloody
emaciated frame sprawling across his shoulders
with a strange weight he wouldn’t
soon forget. Cursed him
in the name of the Holy Trinity
for the first & as it happened
final time: Francisco gave up
the ghost sometime before midnight.
Hard to tell, the way he kept
his eyes open & teeth still bared,
the skin from too much fasting
already shrunk back against the skull,
like Death personified in one of those
chapbooks the beggars used to hawk
in front of the cathedral:
Death & the Maiden . . .
Death at the Banking House . . .
Death Goes on a Picnic With the Greedy Friar.
Who pulls his hat down against
the vastly more greedy sun.

Somewhere in the next dry riverbed,
he knows, his escorts are already
preparing the midday meal.

With some relief he notices
the sudden stillness: behind
as well as before & all around him
an almost otherworldly silence,
his own footsteps now the only sound.

Though this desert–he muses once again–
is never empty. Each bush,
each ground-hugging cactus
& flowering thorn tree sits apart
as if planted for a special purpose.

Here, one’s feet seem naturally
to fit the sober measure
of a pilgrim’s gait:
no ring-around-a-rosie.
No lost running in circles, thank God.
No tarantella.

Marcos (1) (cont’d)

So now (he murmurs) if I still lack
the equipoise of an elder–the requisite
wisdom of a presbyter in the Order–at least
I’ve found a sort of key to one
small puzzle: why Francisco seemed
so elated there at the end. Lent,
the season when a true Christian
should mourn, especially
with all his fellow villagers dead.

Hadn’t he been shunned when Marcos
first arrived? Hadn’t he kept
his medicine bundle (as it turned out)
ensconced under the altar, complete
with the friar’s long-lost mirror
& little tufts of hair
from each of the corpses they’d buried?
Sentimental, Marcos had thought
at the time. But now . . .

The village had followed Francisco
into baptism, as if afraid to let
him keep that grace to himself.
And their loyal servant
of Christ–Ha!–still ready to believe
he’d truly helped save
at least one soul–however
he might dislike the man–
                                            right up
until Good Friday morning,
when he entered the chapel & found
Francisco hanging, God (or the Devil)
knows how, from a new cross
in front of the altar,
crimson teardrop-shaped
flowers sprouting from his brow,
& more blossoms–yellow,
white, violet, blue–festooning
the arms of the cross, clusters
of thorns impaling wrist & palm.

Marcos (1) (cont’d)

                    The old woman
points back to the pole they’d passed
at the center of the village, bedecked
with dark tufts he’d taken for raven feathers.
I danced with it–Me,
in my old rags, my dry
breasts flying, she says, half
in pantomime,
                    laughing
at the white man’s grimace, his childishly
transparent face. The interpreter
tries to explain it: a widespread belief
that if you keep the crown
of the head in your possession
the soul of your slain enemy can’t leave
for the Land Below the East.
After the ceremony & the sixteen
days of separation, its owner–
this man–can fashion the scalp
into a homunculus, a slave
small enough to live in a basket
in the corner.

And reading de Niza’s expression
the interpreter signals an end to it, but
the friar steels himself,
persists: How do they make it serve them
without escaping–or slicing their throats
while they sleep?

The crone straightens, speaking quietly
the way an abbess he knew used to look
any time he tried to tease her
about her youngest charges.
They welcome him into the home like family.
Every day they feed him, even
sing to him at first so he won’t grow homesick.
He’s just like any servant–it’s only when
you forget to feed him that he starts
into mischief, seduces a daughter or a wife.