CUITLAHUAC
It’s said Huitzilopochtli’s temple burns.
PRIEST OF TLALOC
It does so, to the sinking of my gut.
Great rains of sparks dripped on his chapel’s thatch,
Which torched our war god’s crematory pyre,
And lit the flabbergasted rabble’s face,
Their eyes and open mouths like perfect ‘O’s.
Afar, the old, old fire god, aloof,
And chortling at his native element,
Was in his shrine extinguished nonetheless
When shards of lightning from a cloudless sky
Forked up his walls. It seems the gods contend,
And waste their earthly halls as game-board chips.
CUITLAHUAC
Have you beheld the floods?
PRIEST OF TLALOC No. Floods? The floods?
CUITLAHUAC
The boundless lake that rounds our rafty town
Shrugged off her boiling banks, uncorked her wrath,
And, in a breaker to out-swell the sea,
Has drowned our residential waterfront.
House after house bobs in a flotsam fleet-
A drear, domestic archipelago.
PRIEST OF TLALOC
What does the emperor your brother say
Of these most inauspicious auguries?
CUITLAHUAC
It’s in the bag and in the box with him.
He closets up his fear in trumped-up shrugs.
And yet I can not blame his fickleness.
If judgment’s based on past experience,
How to interpret, then, such spectacles,
When what is weighed has never once before
Been seen or rumored in the known-of world?
PRIEST OF TLALOC
Lord Tlacaelel claims that Hungry Prince
Tonight held council with the emperor,
To state his gloss on these phenomena.
CUITLAHUAC
He stands on shaky ground. How did he fare?
PRIEST OF TLALOC
Like to a hummingbird trapped in a hive.
Motecuhzoma’s bellows rattled rafters.
He challenged him at dawn to the arena.
The sacred ball-game shall resolve their feud.
CUITLAHUAC
The stakes?
PRIEST OF TLALOC Unknown, but speculated high.
CUITLAHUAC
We’ll meet then in the morning at the court.
PRIEST OF TLALOC
Let’s get inside, lest Tlaloc should suspect
We dare the tempest-tosser to his worst. They exit.
Oct 11, 2016
Oct 11, 2016 at 12:38 PM UTC
CUITLAHUAC
It’s said Huitzilopochtli’s temple burns.
PRIEST OF TLALOC
It does so, to the sinking of my gut.
Great rains of sparks dripped on his chapel’s thatch,
Which torched our war god’s crematory pyre,
And lit the flabbergasted rabble’s face,
Their eyes and open mouths like perfect ‘O’s.
Afar, the old, old fire god, aloof,
And chortling at his native element,
Was in his shrine extinguished nonetheless
When shards of lightning from a cloudless sky
Forked up his walls. It seems the gods contend,
And waste their earthly halls as game-board chips.
CUITLAHUAC
Have you beheld the floods?
PRIEST OF TLALOC No. Floods? The floods?
CUITLAHUAC
The boundless lake that rounds our rafty town
Shrugged off her boiling banks, uncorked her wrath,
And, in a breaker to out-swell the sea,
Has drowned our residential waterfront.
House after house bobs in a flotsam fleet-
A drear, domestic archipelago.
PRIEST OF TLALOC
What does the emperor your brother say
Of these most inauspicious auguries?
CUITLAHUAC
It’s in the bag and in the box with him.
He closets up his fear in trumped-up shrugs.
And yet I can not blame his fickleness.
If judgment’s based on past experience,
How to interpret, then, such spectacles,
When what is weighed has never once before
Been seen or rumored in the known-of world?
PRIEST OF TLALOC
Lord Tlacaelel claims that Hungry Prince
Tonight held council with the emperor,
To state his gloss on these phenomena.
CUITLAHUAC
He stands on shaky ground. How did he fare?
PRIEST OF TLALOC
Like to a hummingbird trapped in a hive.
Motecuhzoma’s bellows rattled rafters.
He challenged him at dawn to the arena.
The sacred ball-game shall resolve their feud.
CUITLAHUAC
The stakes?
PRIEST OF TLALOC Unknown, but speculated high.
CUITLAHUAC
We’ll meet then in the morning at the court.
PRIEST OF TLALOC
Let’s get inside, lest Tlaloc should suspect
We dare the tempest-tosser to his worst. They exit.
From my play in verse, thefloralwar.com
