Mexican Codices

Yesterday

Ay Ay Ayeres

Digging around in the photo files that I transferred from my old computer to my Google drive, I discovered this golden oldie composed of my words and Clare’s images. What a revelation: I had completely forgotten that this group of work existed. I’ll dig them out ne by one and post them from time to time. Ayer is the Spanish for yesterday, hier in French. The title “Ay! Ay! Ayeres!” with its multiple plays All our yesterdays and its reference to the old song “Ay, ay, ay, canta no llores” draws together a series of memories, some in the past and some in the future. ‘How can we have a memory in the future?’ you ask. By recognizing a present moment, or one that lies just ahead in a future that ill become soon enough a present, as one that has already occurred in the past, thus confirming the circularity of our lives and the idea that all time is time present, one of T. S. Eliot’s recurring themes.

Ocho Venado: Eight Deer is a central figure (war leader) in the Zouche-Nuttal, a pre-Columbian Mixtec Codex. He is the war leader in the Conquests recorded in the codex (circa 1050-1100).
Quesadillas: Oaxacan tortillas filled with cheese and flores de Calabaza, gourd flowers.
Reyes Magos: the three wise men or kings who visited the Christ Child on January 6, the traditional Spanish Christmas.
Murcielago: the bat and a symbol of death in Oaxacan mythology.
Nueve Viento: Nine Wind descends from heaven to separate the sky from earth and its waters. Nine Wind at Tule meeting with Cortes is mythical not historical, though the meeting of Cortes with the Mixtec chiefs (caciques) did happen.
Apoala: The Mixtec nation was born form a cave (sometimes a tree) in Apoala, Oaxaca.
Spinning the wheels in the snow: a reference to Jean Chretien and one of his famous images.

The piece is written in a surrealist style that mixes historical fact with creative writing. The distant past is recalled (1050-1100), then the middle past (1525-1530), and finally the present appears. This mixing of time and place (Mexico and Canada) is also related to the surrealist movement. Surrealism creates a dream world in which images float and change shape within a time-space conundrum where dream is more real than reality and creates its own new meanings that are individual to each reader.

Any comments on this rediscovered piece will be warmly welcomed.

Sun and Moon 10

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Sun and Moon 10

Sun thrusts his fierce face
through night’s dark window
his voice booms out like a golden gong

“What have you done with my child?”

curled and flaming his orange corona
head lucent with a coronet of radiance and fire
his eyes sweep night beneath day’s rug

New Moon pales and fades in a corner
Serpent escapes through a crack in the wall

 

Sun and Moon 9

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Sun and Moon 9

Old Woman walks within a cloister of stars
the heavens arched above her like a peacock’s tail

she chants the garland of her rosary
pearls she sheds from her cratered eyes
stringing them like counters across night’s throat

beauty she calls forth
beauty fresh and youth renewed
flushed with virgin pride
she steps into her jewelled boat
and sails across a sea of crystalline sky

she enfolds the cardinal’s wings in a cage of moonbeams
“Sing!” she whispers
she rocks a new born baby in her arms
the night is hushed with lullabies

 

Sun and Moon 7

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Sun and Moon 7

Old Woman weaves a crinoline from stars
she plucks roses from the void and turns them into haloes
nochebuena blossoms on the perfume of her breath

the cardinal’s song is a crimson voice hidden among leaves
mercurial in the moonlight
Old Woman coils her relentless cage

one by one the cardinal’s tunes are imprisoned
a butterfly impaled on a moonbeam
the last note of his song

 

Sun and Moon 6

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Sun and Moon 6

“Wake up!” says Serpent. “Knock!”
I knock and the door swings open

Old Woman sits spinning at a ghostly wheel
she draws me to her with a string of starlight
I squirm on the fishhook of her eyes
when I blink I fall gutted to the ground

herringbones knit me a tangled destiny
lost people wandering in a tapestry of dreams

as I read my story in the sky around me
Moon scythes my heart into tiny slices
a fishbone slides stitches into my side

dice click
two snake eyes stare into my eyes

 

 

 

Sun and Moon 5

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Sun and Moon 5

dusky shawl of a knitted dream
wrapped round my shoulders
I pick at knots of tangled memory

a word as sharp as a stone
cast at a friend
sea shells cutting
naked feet
at the water’s edge
sunlight
weeping blood
over mother-of-pearl

Old Woman winds
a ball of wool
she handcuffs my wrists
with softness
spun from lambs
my hair turns silver in her mirror

snakelike I slide into my dream
slipping sideways
deep dark well of night

 

 

Sun and Moon 4

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Sun and Moon 4

night without moon without stars
dark sand dropping
filling my mouth
I walk the lonely bed of a dried up river

when I stumble in my dream
my feet leave no footprints
colourless is my path
through shadow and sand

figures of darkness
conjured before me
hollow their eyes
their mouths black caverns
no flesh decks their bones

footless they sigh
a sibilant song
mindless they draw in
a net full of sorrows

silver fish darkling
losing their sparkle

 

 

Sun and Moon 3

 

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Sun and Moon 3

at midnight Serpent slithers through
a gap in the fence of my dream
he slides close to my shivering body
and lies there chill against my skin

his length – a sword without a scabbard
unscaleable wall of unblemished steel
severing all warmth

“Tomorrow,” he says, “I will take you to the sky.
But first, you must watch me dance.”

he twists in circles winding and unwinding
infinite loops and figures of eight
endless cat’s cradle of bottomless shape

sleep draws my feet deeper into quicksand
the night wind whispers me a head full of dreams

 

 

Sun and Moon 1

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Sun and Moon 1

Last week an old man squeezed the moon;
tonight, she’s a shrunken orange in the sky.

“Tell me, Moon:
when all the stars have been caught in my net,
what will I harvest?”

Silence descends a ladder of moonlight
bearing an offering of gift-wrapped stars.

“Wise Old Woman who lives in the sky:
what man tore your bones apart
and gave me your face?”

Dead leaves rush out through my eyes.
My hands stretch out before my face
and I wash them in moonlight.

“One day, I’ll climb to your silver palace
and steal all your secrets.”

Comment: Sun and Moon 2 (as sung by Cat Leblanc) is introduced and complemented by Sun and Moon 1. These are the first two poems in the ten poem title sequence of Sun and Moon. The eagle costumes, shown in the photo, belong to the original dance sequence from Sun and Moon as performed on Monte Albán.

Sun and Moon 2

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Sun and Moon 2

Eagle paints my eyes with daylight.
He offers to fly me to the sky.
His feathers trap sunshine in his pinions.
Morning is a rebozo draped over his plumage.

“My mother is blind,” says Eagle.
“Her sight: cold ashes in the fireplace.
Stripped of her dreams,
she wanders in darkness.
You must give her
the fire from your eyes!”

Tiger offers to carry me to the sky.
Flame speckles his pelt.
His eyes are two scorched blocks of charcoal.
“I will break the bread of your bones,” says Tiger,
“and warm myself on the fire of your blood!”

Serpent offers to bear me to the sky.
His scales are shards of emerald and ruby.
His serpent’s blood runs cold through his veins.
He weighs me in the twin dice of his eyes.

“Where I lead you must follow,” Serpent says.
“There is no other price.”

 

Comment: Here as promised are the words to yesterday’s song as composed and sung by my good friend Cat Leblanc. This is the second stanza from the ten poem title sequence of Sun and Moon. Here is the link.