Let's begin our song with its music coda —
Nahua elders, of an agricultural peoples of ancient America
weaving their way into history's braided tail
with a relevant document of late fifteen hundreds
communed with a Spanish Franciscan friar, Bernardino de Sahagún
suspending time and space onto European paper
writing, a general history, of the things of New Spain
the Florentine Codex (1575-77), during the Great Pestilence of 1576
Meeting to collect the remains of the day in Colegio Imperial
on the Aztec bones of a city now called Mexico
it was ends of eras, community, culture, ghosts
a Rosetta stone of Spanish steel and Nahua blood columns
laid out so even Pliny the Elder would be proud
thirty plus years to account, thousands dead
now resting at Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, Italy
this profane tomb still wet from the voyage of conquest ...
Nahua, you plant your staple crops, still
beans, maize, squash, tomatoes; still
the maguey plant calls to your weavers, still
remembering your hands and hearts, still
crushing life may come and go
but the elders foregoing forgetting
released their spirits to print your song
-cec
Na/GloPoWriMo: Prompt- As with pretty much any discipline, music and art have their own vocabulary. Today, we challenge you to take inspiration from this glossary of musical terms, or this glossary of art terminology, and write a poem that uses a new-to-you word. For (imaginary) extra credit, work in a phrase from, or a reference to, the Florentine Codex.
I found it most important to give some history here ...