HUNGRY PRINCE
            It is the year One-Reed, and on this date
            Lord Quetzalcoatl, from this earthly throne,
            Long, long ago departed for the East,
            And on One-Reed it’s known he will return.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            One-Reed: It is a fatal year for kings.
            Our scriptures teach that when a murderous streak
            Finds black Tezcatlipoca, lord of chaos,
            On year One-Crocodile, he hunts our elders,
            One-Jaguar or One-Deer, he claims our children.
            But if he strikes on ominous One-Reed,
            Death swoops for princes.

MOTECUHZOMA                             On that jolly note,
            I open business for this syndicate,
            Myself presiding. All may find their seats.
            Now Tlacaelel, venerable friend,
            What progress on the state’s scholastic front?
            When last we met, the annals of our past
            Were deemed due for aesthetic overhaul.

TLACAELEL
            Lords, as you know, our eldest histories
            Have painted base and barbarous accounts
            Of our bewildered, wandering origins
            As meek and muddy natives, which- though true-
            Do not keep pace with our notorious present.
            Those earth-born tracts have all been commandeered
            And each one cast to char in heaping bonfires.
            Ah, what a purifying blaze that was!
            The inks of black and reds were rarefied
            To sheets of flame and wells of fluid coals.
            Now is our culture cleansed of heresies!
            So far from mourning that scholastic loss,
            The rabble whooped, and, singing rowdy reels,
            Made merry at that bedtime barbecue.
            And now, to re-devise those lowly annals,
            I move that we enlist our liveliest dreamers
            To craft extravagant and stately archives
            And claim the pedigree that we deserve.
            For what are histories but wrangling theses,
            Or dogma, but the darlings of a moment?
            So on this same authentic evidence,
            Let’s breed imaginary ancestors-
            Or ***** their deeds out- with a flourished pen.