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Leyenda My mother dared not touch me when I cried. She kept me in a chest of drawers. Each morning she went to the wasteland for wood. I appeared to her again, diminutive and wrapped in stone. Looking on my dark face, she took me home once more, put me in the cupboard with her things. Each time the priests completed my shrine, daddy shook the mountains by their roots. Once two brothers loved the same woman, a priest and a politician. Forced to choose, her beauty sowed the seed of fratricide. She might have been the bishop’s whore or baked his bread in exile. Juana, Isabella, Marguerite, where are you now? Who has set the cross that divides the barrios? The Queen wears radiant robes of gold, the little baby boy securely sleeps. Poet, your mother wanted you to be strong. Your grandmother took you to the doctor who removed your eyes and sewed them in again so you might learn to see like other boys. She listens to our stories, the poor and the maimed. In her name, are perpetual indulgences for all. The children fill soda bottles with holy water I fall to my knees and cry, I do not love you. I don’t love you any more at all! Serenity, you are the black Virgin, apparent understanding and abiding. I have looked in all the libraries and forests for your tale. I have sensed, Nazim, the horror and the bliss of holy words; then reflected, Athena, your keepers did not permit you yourself to write or read the scripts. Every eight years, on the 2nd of August, Venus appears (Serpiente envuelta en plumas) in the same position (Quetzalcóatl). It is the feast day of the Queens of Costa Rica and Guatemala. The daykeeper is mother-father of the people First in the lineages, obsidian mirror, Tohil. Against a black felt, the glass cases display small votive figures in rows and columns of similar manufacture but Mayan appearance. The face in the reflection is my face as I imagine it with eyes closed, caught in prayer.
Donald Wellman | Mudlark No. 34 |