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.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Ah, Tlacaelel, ghost limb of my father,
            Who was a lord when I but governed dolls,
            The foremost man once more at our grave council.

TLACAELEL
            Those at life’s twilight like to rise at dawn.
            Good day, Motecuhzoma, emperor
            Of all the notable of known-of realms.

                                                        ­   Enter CUITLAHUAC

MOTECUHZOMA
            And here’s Cuitlahuac in his finest weeds,
            With darkened circles under bloodshot eyes.
            Well, little brother, you’re a paradox-
            My junior for a senior senator!

CUITLAHUAC
            Those two short years that separated us
            Must have profoundly aged and seasoned you,
            You point them out so often. But go on.
            Motecuhzoma, happy new year, sir.

TLACAELEL
            Good boy, Cuitlahuac. Stick it to the bully!

CUITLAHUAC
            Lord Tlacaelel, you’ve out-fathered Father,
            And middle age must curtsy to your years.

                     Enter a Priest of Tlaloc. Others trickle in, as many as may be.

MOTECUHZOMA
            High priest of Tlaloc, come. How fares our god
            Of fruitful springs and thunderstorm today?

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            He banquets with your captive warriors’ souls,
            And incense fumes his rosy breakfast, sire.

TLACAELEL
            Your grace, you know the judgment we have reached
            Regarding Hungry prince?

PRIEST OF TLALOC                               I have been briefed.
            But here Texcoco’s king himself arrives.
                                    
                   ­                                         Enter HUNGRY PRINCE.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Well, Hungry Prince! Co-sovereign of Texcoco,
            Comrade-in-arms, my true facsimile,
            Who’s shared the ruling of our empire, welcome.

HUNGRY PRINCE
            Hail, grand triumvir and my counterpart,
            A bright new year, you lords of Mexico.
            Our best regards from my side of the lake!
            And yet, it is a Triple Alliance we lead.
            Where’s brave Tlacopan’s king, our third accomplice?

MOTECUHZOMA
            That languid chief seemed spent and in decline,
            And, sadly, has been ordered back to bed;
            Our trident’s but a single spear today.
            But welcome all, and may we welcome here
            The first day of a new, uncharted year.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            A New Year’s Day, which- due to the complex
            And interlocking gears of calendars-
            Comes only every fifty-second year.

TLACAELEL
            Two hundred years have we known only strife,
            Kept innocent of peace, to fortify
            Huitzilopochtli, our grand god of conquest,
            Who hoists aloft our death-denying sun
            And handsomely escorts him through the east.
            Such toil demands the selfless sustenance
            Of that most precious sacrifice, our hearts;
            Small, hot, red gems- we grant them gratefully.
            Our god need not stand waiting for affronts
            Or hissing disrespect to rattle arms.
            No, rather let us seek convenient markets
            Where our Blue Prince of war, when whimsy strikes,
            Might carve downed captives to refresh his plate
            And tie his bib with dead men’s winding-sheets,
            As if he strolled through cheap tortilla stalls,
            And clutched our legions for his currency.
            To this emporium shall we caravan,
            Procuring crocks of blood and priceless hearts
            By bartering to swap our solvent lives.
            Oh, let it be Tlaxcala, gentlemen!
            For if we pitch this depot to the north,
            The taxing hike to those unconquered tribes
            Should prove an inconvenience to our troops.
            Besides, the tough and stringy flesh of those
            Bare-bottomed grunts, rock-knocking savages,
            Must strike our god as stale as sandal-leather.
            Then let Tlaxcalans be his board of fare:
            Moist cutlets, fresh and steaming from the range,
            Shall furnish forth his sanguinary feasts.
            We must not waste these others totally,
            But make a handy pantry of this foe,
            For war- alone undying- must endure.

CUITLAHUAC
            Bravo. I’ll side with you to storehouse them,
            So that we hamstring their free trafficking,
            And thus declaw our sole belligerent.

TLACAELEL
            I’m pleased your verdicts are adaptable.

HUNGRY PRINCE
            Either to weaken or to waste this threat,
            You’ll have my armies at your hand.

TLACAELEL                                                   That's nice.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Now, Hungry Prince, let’s brace for weighty words. . .

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.

MOTECUHZOMA
            My torch that does not smoke, your will be done.
            We’ll, with a clean-slate log, draft dignity.
            Yet what events may come to canonize?
            The wider our domain has stretched her range,
            The weaker our elastic hold becomes,
            As one half of our empire is employed
            With forceps to extract the other half.
            Our reign superimposes all the earth
            From the volcanic groves of Mayaland
            Up to the shifting wastelands of the North.
            But there is one last nest of brigandry,
            A murky pocket glowering in the east:
            That vile Tlaxcala, left to roam at large,
            And, as a single bed flea spoils my sleep,
            So does this fractious county drain my humor.
            Brother- What pesticide must flush these flies?

CUITLAHUAC
            We have the force to raze those traitors down,
            And what we might attempt, our might must crown.
            Our fertile empire rounds their toxic realm
            As healthy flesh imprisons cancerous rot;
            If eagles nursed a stranger’s egg to find
            Their warm embrace has thawed a rattling asp.
            We once did stalk Tlaxcalans for our sport,
            And prize their trophied hides like ten-point bucks.
            But these stray pups have hardened to coyotes,
            On crouching haunches, like a nightmare, hunched
            Upon a flowerlike land that should support
            A million civilized and happy men.
            Their population’s health should be no more
            Than called for by an enterprising nation
            For water-drawers and hewers of our wood.
            Let’s pinch this pest we coddle at our breast,
            And clip these hatchlings’ wings while in the nest.

MOTECUHZOMA
            So should we compromise our Mexico,
            By thus unpopulating her of men.
            What says our loving minister of war?
            Speak, Tlacaelel, and pronounce their doom.