SANDOVAL
            Your brigs of bustling pilgrims light at last
            On this sweet-scented isle called Cozumel.
            Depopulating half of Cuba’s farms,
            The skills of our six hundred souls, or so,
            Erupt now in a pitched activity.
            We’ve confiscated idols, and our cross
            Now overlooks the rising ropes and tarps;
            Our cannons hedge the campground, with our horse,
            As secret weapons, hidden in the ships.

ALVARADO
            Now what a breezing cakewalk will it be
            To pacify this docile flock of lambs!
            Let’s ****** the sweetmeats from their trembling lips,
            And wean them to the yoke of servitude.
            Vassals alone make masters out of men.

CORTÉS
            Not yet so fast. For Cuba’s stewardship
            Forbids such a carnivorous regime.
            Father Olmedo warns us not to tease,
            Much less ******, the native nymphs.

ALVARADO                                                        Cortés,
            We trust that you, like all stargazing men,
            Crave glory, fortune, and above all, fame;
            That royal favor and divine accord
            Will light on those who quell idolatry,
            And carve new lands for God and His Castile.

CORTÉS
            But like a gentlemanly pirate, I.
            For Cuba’s governor deceives himself.
            His pure concern for human chattel, gold,
            And bandying the Indies as it were
            A distant annex of the Moorish war
            Has wrought a desert from a paradise.
            Long-term success requires a colony.
            And with what wherewithal! These islanders
            Stand head and shoulders o’er Carribbeans,
            With their rich-painted books and towering keeps,
            The graceful girding of their modesties-

SANDOVAL
            Their slave trades, and their binding bright bouquets-

ALVARADO
            Distilling liquor: Culture’s surest sign.

CORTÉS
            Our prime directive is to baptize them,
            Not march before their eyes the Seven Sins.
            But how to learn their Tower-of-Babel tongues?

HUNGRY PRINCE                                              
            Last night, I watched a comet scorch the stars,
            And thaw the moon to melt into her sea.
            It detonated in a shower of sparks,
            A fiery triad, hissing to the lake.
            To me, a clear-cut message there shall be
            Three final, leading lights of Mexico-
            But I, alas, shall not be one of them.
            Farewell, old man, but hoard what friends you have.
            For now whatever well-planned path you take,
            Dark hearts and dusty bones ride in my wake.                        *Exit.

MOTECUHZOMA
            I stand here, lords, a humbled man, to bow
            Before divine arbitrament with you.
            Tell me the damage of my botchery,
            And do not let my title tie your tongue.
            Unfold his ballot, and unveil my doom.

TLACAELEL
            Great Speaker of the state of Mexico,
            It is my solemn duty to report
            That, by the power vested to my role
            In this most sacred trial by tournament,
            Your bounty due unto this king shall be . . .
                                                           [Opens the second wager.]
            Three turkey *****, of prime and grade-A stock.

MOTECUHZOMA
            You staked your kingdom on three gobbling birds?
            Why did you shy to wager higher, man?

HUNGRY PRINCE
            My father always warned me, never bet
            For more than what you know you might receive.

MOTECUHZOMA
            But- grinning simpleton- what will you do
            With burlap sacks of poultry for a prize?

HUNGRY PRINCE
            Why, I’ll farm out a new triumvirate.
            The old one closed from lack of membership.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Not hamstrung by a certain turkey’s qualms?

HUNGRY PRINCE
            But poachered by the greater gobbler.

MOTECUHZOMA
            So you shall never gain my kingdom now.

HUNGRY PRINCE
            And you can never keep your kingdom now.

MOTECUHZOMA
            That fails to follow. Who could rival me?

HUNGRY PRINCE
            You’ll follow my allusion soon enough,
            Once your own subjects fail to follow you.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Fool! What I banked on was your fantasy.

HUNGRY PRINCE
            Friend, what you staked on was my prophecy,
            And what I prophesied, the gods confirm
            By our ill-tilting trial in this field.
            I have foretold your empire shall be lost,
            And lost it shall be, to my heart’s dismay.
            And therefore, farewell Mexico! Or else,
            Farewell, Motecuhzoma. I’m afraid
            One must be sacrificed to speed the other.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Why know you not, straw man, I am the empire.
            My doctrines are her laws; her braves, my brawn.
            It is my veins her riches run through, sir,
            And when she prays, it is my vows she breathes.

HUNGRY PRINCE
            But when she suffers, you repose and dream,
            And when she starves, her rumblings go unheard,
            As you crack crab shells at the groaning board.
            A pretty study, then, in symbiosis.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Why bandy taunts with this malingerer?
            Let’s penitently tender sacrifice,
            And leave this dreamer to his reveries.
            It seems such visions reign these days.

TLACAELEL                                                            
            The weeks since last we met found Hungry Prince
            Of late locked in his tower, casting scrolls
            Which chart the star-crossed charms of the occult.
            And in the predawn darkness of his arts,
            He broke through to a voice from the beyond
            Which whispered that the throne of Mexico
            Must soon come to be ruled by foreigners.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            And thus the emperor submits to trial,
            And these, their wagers, are red herrings, then.

TLACAELEL
            To spare us the demoralizing news.
            The spirits’ hands will steer them to reveal
            If this prognostication failed or not.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            The ball’s in motion. Let the gods decide.

TLACAELEL
            Motecuhzoma falls! The ball is down! The ball is down!

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            Dust rises, and our lord is lost to view!

TLACAELEL
            Three in a row! Were we left hanging, then,
            For torturers to **** by small and small?

                              MOTECUHZOMA and HUNGRY PRINCE reappear.

MOTECUHZOMA [aside]
            I’ve lost then, but the full significance
            Of that word “lost” I’ve yet begun to know.
            Gods need not lie, and here we have their words.
            Well, let it come. [to Tlacaelel] Unseal the wagers, lord,
            And read before these noble witnesses
            The stakes we trusted to you at the serve.

TLACAELEL
            First, the abortive fee for Hungry Prince:
            King of Texcoco, had this victory
            Been won by his imperial majesty,
            And you had failed, your forfeiture had been . . .
                                                             [Opens the first wager.]
            The loss of all your lands, your courts, your throne,
            And all, for your opponent’s acquisition,
            Decoronation to a common man,
            And forced prostration to this gentleman.

HUNGRY PRINCE
            A staggering ransom! I must thank the gods,
            Not for their championing me, but truth.

TLACAELEL [to audience as spectators]
            Hear ye! Of these five games, his majesty
            The emperor has won the first two rounds,
            And Hungry Prince has crowned the third and fourth.
            Who takes this final set will clinch the match.

HUNGRY PRINCE [aside to Motecuhzoma]
            Motecuhzoma, why not call it quits,
            While thus we tilt in equilibrium,
            So time may be arrested in his stride,
            And nothing will be proven to your loss.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Oh yes, well, well you should prevaricate,
            Since you recoil, and your horoscope
            Is but a bunk, evasive, spurious sham.

HUNGRY PRINCE
            We used to sport like willful brothers once.
            This pointless schism scathes me to the core.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Play on! Your grace, equip him for the serve.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            Behold this little token of a ball-
            Through this ordeal, symbolic of the sun
            When- swallowed nightly by the earth’s dark mouth-
            He spars with demons of the underworld,
            To birth anew at dawn. So does this sphere,
            Across the blood-bathed flagstones of this court.
            Regard it so. The gods assort you both.
            To one: bask in divine approval’s nod,
            The other: dark ignominy. Engage!

                He throws the ball to HUNGRY PRINCE. MOTECUHZOMA          and HUNGRY PRINCE leave the stage separately.

TLACAELEL
            A solid serve.

PRIEST OF TLALOC          A capital return.

TLACAELEL
            These salt-and-pepper gents belie their age.
            Look how they swoop, like eagles ******-beaked.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            Our monarch springs, a glistening dynamo.

TLACAELEL
            And his contender sheds years as he runs.
            Tell me, your eminence,
            What are your sentiments on Hungry Prince?

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            Though not a brilliant statesman, he remains
            The most perceptive prophet of the earth,
            With whom the gods must share their captain’s logs,
            His auspices so rarely miss their mark.

TLACAELEL
            You’d buy his soothsaying?

PRIEST OF TLALOC                           I'd say I would.

TLACAELEL
            That’s to the heart of this imbroglio.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            What is the real dispute, then, of this duel?

TLACAELEL
            You’d know their true contention?

PRIEST OF TLALOC                                     Tell me.

TLACAELEL                                                                 So . . .

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 *******-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-****** to his worst.                    *They exit.

CUITLAHUAC
            Who goes there? Speak!

PRIEST OF TLALOC                         Another wandering soul.

CUITLAHUAC
            God save your heart, your grace.

PRIEST OF TLALOC                         And yours, my lord.

CUITLAHUAC
            This is no night to sleepwalk thus abroad.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            The shouts and whimpers chased me from my bed,
            And stir me in somnambulating fright.

CUITLAHUAC
            These whirlwinds pour forth torrents from the sky,
            But what is worse- the horrid portents seen
            From every roof, spark tears from every eye.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            Our crops droop as if weary of this world,
            And beasts, most manlike, brood on shapeless fears.

CUITLAHUAC
            The time’s as if our wives around the hearth
            Spun yarns of winter’s tales to fright our tots,
            And woke to find their nursery-romance real.
            Now, fairy-fabled bugbears lurk in alleys.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            The sallow moon, a lop-eared phantom looms;
            Her astral lantern threats pale devilry,
            More fearsome on display than in eclipse.

CUITLAHUAC
            A sulfurous comet brands the starry sphere;
            Its tail points like a trail towards Mayaland,
            And nightly northward does it come- It creeps.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            If ever man has offered prayer for omens,
            He could not ask for signs more palpable.

CORTÉS
            Trailblazing pioneers, God’s harbingers:
            The shining daylight of the Renaissance
            Now swiftly dissipates the blindfold gloom
            Of this benighted, dark, and iron age.
            And as this dawn of culture greets the globe,
            Our own Castile, of all the hosts of Europe,
            Emerges as its greatest modern power.
            If we receive the bounty of these lands,
            So must we bear our duty to convert,
            And shall redeem these hell-bound debutantes.
            Coincidence?- That as the graceless Moors
            Were drubbed and shunted from our Christian sands,
            And in the very year our spiring cross
            Eclipsed that toenail paring of a moon-
            That new horizons opened in the west?
            Do you not feel, my fresh adventurers,
            That you are precious to the Lord, and chosen?
            Strike sail!                                                          E­xit.
              
ALVARADO                  You heard the captain. Up and at ‘em.
            You porters, lash the tents to tame these winds.
            The horsemen will untwine the provender.             Exit Garrido.

SANDOVAL
            The women must find tinder, turf, and fuel.
            The sun is down. We race against the dusk.           Exit María.

ESCUDERO
            These heavy, gathering clouds have opened up,
            And threaten to bestow unwanted gifts.

DÍAZ
            It is the cyclone season out at sea.

SANDOVAL
            Such scuddy weather bodes a sudden turn.

ALVARADO
            Let’s hustle then to fumble up a camp,
            And save our “oo-” and “ahh”ing for the dawn.
                                                           ­                           Exit all but Olmedo.
OLMEDO
            Thus shall the ardent lights of Europe come,
            And pour upon these newfound neophytes.
            But will they be enlightening Catholic lamps,
            Or a consuming fire to destroy them?                     *Exit.

ALVARADO
            Yes, raise the curtain of this maiden world!
            Now, shall we find the halls of El Dorado,
            Where princes make an almshouse of their mines,
            And paupers plate their lumber-shacks with gold.
            
SANDOVAL
            See where the jungle frowns against the shore:
            A burial-ground of bright, backwater wealth.
            Might there the Seven Enchanted Cities lie,
            Where opals roll like pebbles in a brook?

                                    Enter ESCUDERO.

ESCUDERO
            My failing eyes still seek the Fount of Youth.
            What waste is it to search for sixty years
            When one charmed beverage shall reset my clock?
            If I should find this spring, then- like Apollo-
            I’d shrug at heaven’s everlasting souls,
            And strut till doomsday on a deathless earth.
          
                             Enter MARÍA DE ESTRADA and GARRIDO.
            
MARÍA DE ESTRADA
            A premiere world!

GARRIDO                         The theme of long-lost songs.

MARÍA DE ESTRADA
            Are there tall tribes of savage Amazons,
            Who bend their husky bows with coppery arms,
            And lop their milkless ******* to aid their aim?

GARRIDO
            Are there foul-featured men- if men they be-
            Whose ox-like trunk supports two partnered heads?
            Or, floppy-eared and dog-faced manikins,
            Who live (they say) on but the scent of blooms?
            And yet, if in this thicket dwell such men
            As dark as they who cheered me at my birth,
            We’ll call you Spanish but a schoolboy’s tale.
            And what a pretty picture that will make!

ALVARADO
            Cortés alights!

SANDOVAL                    All silent for Cortés!

MOTECUHZOMA
            Now, Hungry Prince, let’s brace for weighty words.            
            You know that since our founding fathers’ reign
            Our kingdoms have been linked like tilting twins,
            Sharing the fruits and frowns of war alike,
            Two striding shanks, each foot outreaching each,
            My Mexicans, the eagles of this island,
            Across the lake, your leopards of Texcoco,
            Dainty Tlacopan third and least of all.

CUITLAHUAC
            But, since the death of wise Hungry Coyote-
            Your father- one alone has hitched the wind,
            One arm engirdling our fractious state,
            Which on one mighty truncheon hops her way.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Our Triple Alliance therefore is dissolved.
            Now must this galled umbilical be clipped,
            Tlacopan liquidated for our bullion,
            And you to trudge your solitary trail,
            With gods’ best blessings for your bond and bail.

HUNGRY PRINCE [aside]
            Oh, let my heart freeze up at this cold news,
            For if this tongue should blab the ****** thoughts
            These staunchless chambers seal inside my chest,
            The tyrant should extract this swollen fruit,
            And make my skull the drinking cup of God.
            Thus should I truly mirror this prodigy-
            A heartless sap, who’s plainly lost his head.

TLACAELEL
            Hungry Prince,
            Take aim at only what is possible,
            For you and I alike both know the fancy
            Of human justice only enters where
            The pressure of necessity is equal,
            And that the stout and rivalrous exact
            All that they can, the weak grant what they must.
            Of gods we do believe, of men we know,
            That by a natural proclivity,
            Wherever they can wield the whip, they will.
            This primal rule was not drawn up by us,            
            Nor were we first to heed its nascent call.
            The trail’s long blazed, and we do but inherit
            This trait, and shall bequeath it to all time,
            Content to know that you and all mankind,
            If once enfranchised vast as we are now,
            Would do as we now do.
                                              Exit all but Motecuhzoma and Hungry Prince.

HUNGRY PRINCE                                Thus it must be,
            Since thus you have declared it for a rule.
            And though this outlook seems the sophistry
            Of inharmonious and immoderate minds,
            Who will say ‘no’ when you have said ‘it’s so?’

MOTECUHZOMA
            Do not return, when taxmen come to call,
            And whine that I require too much of you,
            Since now you nod assent to my decree.
            You know the fortune of capricious war:
            Today for you, tomorrow it’s for me.                       Exit.

HUNGRY PRINCE
            Then revel it, old ruffian, while you may.
            Tomorrow’s but a fitful sleep away.                         *Exit.