Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
THERE ARE NO ACCIDENTS. I think it was no accident that I came across a quote from Franz Kafka last night – to the effect that if you remain quite still and solitary, “the world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.” Will it? I am an empty cup. What will show itself?
– Tom Montag, Curlew: Home, Chapter 1 – “The Journey,” third paragraph
A couple newly scanned articles were added to the archive of articles on peaceful societies at Peaceful Societies.org this morning. Of greatest general interest is one called “The Natural History of Peace: A Positive View of Human Nature and Its Potential,” by Leslie Sponsel.
Sponsel reviews a vast range of literature to support his argument that peace is an essential part of the human experience. While he does not deny the obvious reality of violence and warfare in the past and present, his evidence casts strong doubts on many of the arguments made by those who maintain that humanity is intrinsically violent. The author reviews literature from biology, primate ethology, human ethology, human paleontology, prehistoric archaeology, ethnology and ethnography to make several critical conclusions: that human violence is not inevitable; that warfare is not universal; that peacefulness prevails, and has prevailed, in many societies; and that humans, by nature, can be either peaceful or violent.
High in the mountains
one hayfield remains uncut.
A doe’s ear twitches.
Bed of the Dry Fork
scored for tic-tac-toe: water fills all
the squares with zero.
Camp at the woods’ edge.
Morning sun brings rhododendrons
into your tent.
Steep banks, big boulders,
pools – everything but otters
in Otter Creek.
At Dolly Sods
when the wind slows down, it’s delicious:
wild azaleas.
When they cut the forest,
the soil burned off. Bleeding hearts
bloom among the rocks.
On two different hikes
I looked at lichens & left
the map in my pack.
Visit the Monongahela National Forest webpage for more information about some of the places referenced here, including Dolly Sods Wilderness (history here) and Otter Creek Wilderness. For a previous Via Negativa post on West Virginia, see Almost heaven.
Simon Zopeloxochitl (cont’d)
My lord, it’s true, everything
I’ve written: they honor the Lords
of Earth & Sky without drawing
a drop of blood.
Any man can carve a god
in his own image: feathered shaft,
sacrifice reduced to mere intent,
pure attention.
Their priests, sitting in darkness,
can raise the Earth’s very pulse.
Despite their suspicions, they let me
observe their ceremonies–though once
they found a pile of my sketches
& burned them. I learned
of a lake to the west where
the ancestors live, a place of herons.
It’s true, they impersonate
the gods of our youth:
Xilonen, Xochipilli, Xiuhtecuhtli.
No writing, no calendar competes
for the Sun Priest’s loyalty;
his accounting is immaculate.
The nameless days
announce themselves
simply by showing their unrepeatable faces.
I have learned
the Popoloca murmur
of wind through dry reeds,
the blood-colored canyons
where the rivers go
to hide under roots of willows.
I have seen the sun & the moon
trade places.
Toward the end, the nahualli
rarely slept except in snatches.
He half-believed a yellowbeard fable
that left no place for him,
an above-ground version of
that World where every locale
melts into every other.
Out of cliffs & crags & buttes
he tried to dream it:
a No-Place just for him,
garden within walls.
They scattered his remains
like dangerous seeds across what they call
Corn Mountain.
When I found the hidden trail to the top
I brought two scraps of deer hide
I’d prepared in lieu of paper,
one dyed red, the other painted black.
On the red parchment
in black ink I inscribed
the names of Christ–
Dios, Plumed Serpent,
Tloque Nahuaque, Sacred Heart–
& on the black scrap, in red ink
the mirror-words
for Tezcatl-Ipoca:
World-Owner,
Self-Parodist,
Enemy-of-Both-Sides.
I opened a vein, scattered my heart’s
petals across both pieces,
placed them at opposite ends of the butte.
In four directions I sent my breath,
calling Vulture by his secret name,
Lord of Oracles.
Six days later
when I went to check
both scraps were gone.
Two scrolls of coyote shit
sat in their place,
concise & pointed.
__________
Popoloca – Barbarian. What the Aztecs and other Mexica invaders of the Valley of Mexico were called by the urbanized Toltec, whom they eventually supplanted.
the gods of our youth – I.e., those presumed to predate their cultural assimilation into Mesoamerica.
a yellowbeard fable – I.e., the Seven Cities myth of a Christian utopia in the wilderness.
one dyed red, the other painted black – The Aztec kenning (traditional metaphor) for writing is “the black and the red,” referring to the colors of ink used for the glyphs and illustrations.
mirror-words – Aztec kenning for a kenning.
Tezcatl-Ipoca was the patron deity of sorcerers and the mythological opponent of Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent. The former was identified primarily with the Mexica and the latter with the Toltecs and their predecessors.
In the town of Accident, lawns are cratered from the impacts of meteorites and loose pieces of passing jets. People who would never consider sitting in a tree during a thunderstorm regularly commit themselves to four-wheeled suicide machines for work and pleasure. Hometown boys and girls volunteer for slavery and the slaying of enemies, because they need the work. No one deliberates for very long before taking action – or inaction, as the case may be. People huddle anxiously in front of their televisions awaiting news and updates about the gods, who live outrageously as only immortals are able. “We work hard, and we play hard, too,” they say when prompted.
In the town of Accident, they’ve never not been at war. The Indian wars, the wars for political independence and/or somebody’s freedom, the mine wars, the war against nature – it’s always the same terror, a cold winter coming on with hunger already showing its sallow face. Better stock up on happy meals. The wolf must be kept from the door, they say, placing bounties and sending their crack shots off into the wilderness. Their love is a jealous love, but their friendships are chancy affairs which they feel free to walk away from as soon as the other turns out not to be a comfortable mirror image of themselves.
In the town of Accident, license and power are frequently dressed up as Freedom and led around the streets in an open cart. On Memorial Day, they serve magic funnel cakes that reappear as often as they are eaten. Here is the church and here is the steeple, and here is heaven right now where we can enjoy it. Why seek enlightenment if you can’t know when you’re enlightened? Knowledge is fucking, this we know, for the Bible tells us so! (“And Abraham knew his wife Sarah, and she conceived.”) In the town of Accident, no one can conceive of different ways of knowing. In their public schools, children learn about frogs by picking through their corpses rather than by sitting quietly at the edge of a marsh for several years.
In the town of Accident, New Agers view nature as a treasure house of archetypes and spirit guides, and spokespeople for the extractive industries wax rhapsodic about Mother Nature and Wise Use. Their mythology employs a special, arcane term for the outcome of conflict: progress. They think that those who do not know the truth – such as the people in all the neighboring towns – will be much the worse for it, so they’re really doing them a favor by burning their crops and houses and killing all their fighting-age males.
In the town of Accident, a single backward glance can turn every accident into a happy one. Perhaps it’s true that, as our mayor says, mistakes were made. But Someone has a plan, and we’re all in it. This, in fact, is the pinnacle of wisdom: to know that there is not and has never been such a thing as Accident. Spread the word.
Simon Zopeloxochitl
My lord, the black nahualli is dead.
I went with the brownrobes as
you ordered, saw to it
that the lay brother called Honoratio
got left behind in Petatlán
with a sudden sickness.
Lacking a second white man, then–
an official witness–what Spaniard
would take the word of one
credulous friar, however many
natives he quotes? A foreigner even
among foreigners: he speaks their castellano
worse than I do. And whatever he meant
by “city of gold”–a world-denier
like him–no one thought to wonder.
Coronado’s soldiers hated him
from start to finish.
The nahualli Esteban is dead:
& with him the gravest threat
to the gods of our long-lost cousins
at Chicomoztoc,
at the Seven Caves.
I escaped their arrows;
they let me live among them
until the governor’s visit.
I taught them the art
of surrender, how to avoid
the yellowbeard’s venom.
To lend him what he asks for
without giving up the title.
At my insistence they kept
their sacred images out of sight, just
as if they were women, or reckless
boys. I recounted the pathetic
tale of Montezuma.
They would’ve killed me
for a witch as well
but I repeated Esteban’s admonitions
in language they’d accept:
You can’t stop a torrent–
but you can stand back, let
your check-dams capture the silt,
the rich litter.
(To be continued.)
__________
Simon Zopeloxochitl is an invented character. He first made his appearance as a participant in the song contest (see Cibola 86).
The idea of an Aztec sorcerer travelling with Esteban and Marcos as an undercover anthropologist/ambassador to “Cibola” is not as far-fetched as it may seem. The Aztec origin myth of Seven Caves and a Place of Herons somewhere in the far north was given new life by the reports of Seven Cities brought back by Cabeza de Vaca, Esteban and their companions, and was partly responsible for fueling the enthusiasm for an expedition of conquest. (The myth lives on to this day, reflected in the name of the state of New Mexico and in local NM toponymns such as Montezuma and Aztec.) In a few years, a native Aztec revivalist movement would spark rebellions and possibly even a Ghost Dance-type attempt at a new religion, according to one scholar (John Bierhorst). The unspecified “lord” addressed here is presumably a disgruntled nobleman or native priest plotting a revolt.
nahualli – In Nahuat belief, a shaman/sorcerer able to transform him/herself into an animal for travel in the underworld; broadly, any skilled magic-worker.
the governor’s visit – Coronado’s expedition of 1540.
On the outskirts of Frostburg, MD (a college town)
Reader (20)
Gold is shining in your sapodilla house of trogons.
Your home abounds in jade water whorls, O prince,
O Jesucristo.
You’re singing in Anahuac. . . .
You’re hidden away at Seven Caves
where the mesquite grows.
The eagle cries, the jaguar whines; you,
in the midst of the field–a roseate quechol–
fly onward, in the Place Unknown.
ANON. CHRISTIAN AZTEC, 16th century
(adapted from the John Bierhorst translation of Cantares Mexicanos 33:3-8)
You people desired to capture Elder Brother so that you might destroy him. You secured the assistance of Vulture, who made a miniature earth; you saw him at home engaged in this work. He shaped the mountains, defined the water courses, placed the trees, and in four days completed his task. Mounting the zigzag ladders of his house he flew forth and circled until he saw Elder Brother. Vulture saw blue flames issuing from Elder Brother’s heart and knew that he was invulnerable. In his turn Elder Brother knew that Vulture wished to kill him and had made the miniature earth for that purpose.
JOSí‰ LEWIS AND FRANK RUSSELL
“Elder Brother as He Restored Himself to Life” (version of a traditional Akimel O’odham speech/sermon)