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 . . .

MOTECUHZOMA
            If, past this moment, you persist in lies,
            Know I shall bury you beneath my halls,
            Pull down your house till sludge seeps through the planks,
            And wipe your family name from off the earth,
            Yea, to the unborn fragments in the womb.
            Now, wouldn’t you recant this little fib?

FISHERMAN
            Forgive me lord, but what I tell is truth.

TLACAELEL
            Most like it is.

MOTECUHZOMA             Then know, you brave, bold slave,
            These spectral archipelagos you saw,
            Were giantlike canoes, with alien crew.
                                        He gestures to a servant, who produces a trunk.
            One year ago, the waves cast up this trunk
            Of jewels, foreign frocks, and silver swords:
            Most like, the precious jetsam of this launch.

FISHERMAN
            May my aviso aid your eminence.

MOTECUHZOMA
            One see him nobly boarded in our suites.
                                                                  Exit Servant with the Fisherman.

                                       Enter a Majordomo.
                    
TLACAELEL
            Well, watch, where are your hocus-pocus wards?

MAJORDOMO          My lord, command that I be cut to pieces or whatever you wish, for you should know that when I reached the cell, there was no one there. I had my best sentries there, trustworthy men I’ve known for years, but none of them heard the sorcerers escape.

TLACAELEL
            Then how, pray tell me, have they flown the coop?

MAJORDOMO
            Perhaps they flapped away.

TLACAELEL                                       What, gallows-meat?
          
MAJORDOMO        They can sprinkle themselves with fern-spores, and
shimmer into invisibility.

TLACAELEL
            Buzz, buzz! These twice-told tales upend my trust.
            Rope’s end-

MOTECUHZOMA          No. Suffer him.

TLACAELEL                                             As you see fit.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Some say such wizards take wing every night,
            And soar unto the fringes of the earth.

TLACAELEL
            His majesty’s broad magnanimity
            Has spared you this time, turnkey, but repair.
            Not all wards will be such skilled hide-and-seeks.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Now: Torch the hovels of their families,
            And witness if those new lighthouses’ beacons
            Will call their wandering rooks home to re-roost.
                                                                                     Exit Majordomo.
TLACAELEL
            And what of these vast dugouts?

MOTECUHZOMA                                        Time will tell.
            Our steward Teuhtlilli eastward creeps,
            To see what tricks are offered from the deeps.             *They exit.

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.

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
            My lord, your wives entreat you to carouse,
            And tend a show of juggling acrobats.

MOTECUHZOMA
            When work is done. Recall those sorcerers.               Exit Servant.
            Till concrete facts come in, abstractions must suffice.

                                        Enter a Servant.

SERVANT
            Your majesty, a humble fisherman
            Brings news pertaining to these prodigies.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Admit him. [Exit Servant.] Lord, when peons paint my way!

                      Enter the Fisherman and Servant. He trails his hand            
                  on the ground toward him, and kisses his ***** fingertips.

FISHERMAN
            O master, ruler, lord, great gentleman,
            If witless lips which kiss the unswept earth
            Be fit to thus accost an emperor,
            Regard me, if it please your majesty.

TLACAELEL
            Speak, boy. Sublime Motecuhzoma hears.

FISHERMAN
            I come from Hellwood, at your southern shores,
            Where this week past, upon a beetling bluff,
            I glimpsed a buoyant, surging reef of hills
            With twining towers carousing on the waves,
            That seemed a transport for intruding rarities:
            A fear which whisperings in the wind confirmed.

TLACAELEL
            **, **, **!
            Was this the Spirit speaking, or the spirits?
            Some extra mushrooms in your salad, sir?

FISHERMAN
            Discard me if I lie! Hail, lords! All hail!

TLACAELEL
            All hail and sleet and snow, and all things cold.
            And chill reception from this wintry prince,
            For I suspect you seek remuneration.

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. . .

TLACAELEL
            Great, gold-eyed Eagle, greet our messenger,
            We offer his most precious fluid, Lord.
            Bright Hummingbird, accept Thy rubied fruit.
            In tawny plumes, Thou chaperonest the day.
            [To worshipers] We are collaborators with the gods,
            Performing our transcendent duty here.
            For by this action lie the only means
            To eternalize the circuits of the sun:
            An aloe balm to all the sufferings
            Of his interminable pilgrimage.

WORSHIPERS       Blue Prince, may Thou incline Thy heart, that by Thy grace for yet a while may we see in dreams.

TLACAELEL
            For we are God’s own chosen tribe, elect,
            As kernels gleaned and winnowed from the chaff,
            To side in cosmic struggle with the sun,
            To side with goodness, vowed to ascertain
            Its triumph over evil’s looming storm,
            And to bestow to all humanity
            The heavenwide profits of the victory
            Of the resilient forces of the light
            Over the gathering powers of the night.
            Let us pray.                                                          Exit.

WORSHIPERS       Huitzilopochtli, perform Thy office. Do Thy work. May I not reject Thee. May I not falter before Thee. May Thy heart desire whatsoever Thou mayest desire. This is all.
                                                                                   *Trumpets, drum. All exit.

SORCERER 1
            Fell prince, what can we say? Shall we
            Wring fingers, gazing nervously
            Into our black, obsidian mirror?

SORCERER 2
            Or, in our water jugs, to peer,
            Unbinding and retying twine,
            In hope epiphanies shall shine?

SORCERER 3
            Or shall we three, like puzzling mages,
            Cast bright corn-kernels ‘cross the pages
            Of scripture, wincing to descry
            Some omen there?

SORCERER 1                        Or shall we lie?

SORCERER 2
            Were not your lethal gaze forbidden,
            Our eyes from yours no longer hidden,

SORCERER 3
            These mirrors unfilmed to windows-

SORCERER 1                                                 Wink
            We not, you might their contents drink.
                                                           They look at Motecuhzoma.
                    
TLACAELEL
            Bold, brass, and bungling open-sesames,
            Whose saucy tongues shall spice my hangman’s stew,
            You dare let sink your cataracted gaze
            Upon the solar luminance of our king?
            Who meets these eyes, beholds the face of death.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Shackles shall seal their eyes. Clap them away.
            My hopes were stillborn by these blind-man’s bluffs.

SORCERER 1
            A grand charade shall come to pass,
            As marching mysteries amass,
            And urgently these lurkings gather.

SORCERER 2
            If that is what your lord had rather
            Hear from us, so be it, then.

SORCERER 3
            We’ll break our seal and thus unpen
            Two breeds of vision we may show:

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.

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.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Our priests have proven green and tenderfoot
            By goggling at our late, ill auguries:
            Dumbfounded, counselless, they scan their toes.
            For this have I agreed to pawn my pride
            In dabbling with questionable cures
            By calling forth the aid of sorcerers.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            Dread lord, how might your grace with confidence
            Place mercenary warlocks in your trust,
            Who twist their gifts toward late-night banditry,
            It’s said, to paralyze their shaky preys.
            Tezcatlipoca, our capricious master,
            Might cloud our muddy minds yet murkier
            For slumping to such dubious helps as these
            If they make mock of his peculiar knowings.

TLACAELEL
            Don’t worry. If they cool your fevered fears
            We’ll hail their hocus-pocus as white physic.
            If not, then as black fiends in iron they’ll rot.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Bring in these esoteric ministers.

                                  A guard leads in three Sorcerers

            You three obscure and dicing conjurers:
            Have you beheld grim omens in the clouds,
            Or prodigies upon the earth? You three,
            Who fathom ‘neath earth’s black and gem-jammed caverns
            To skim atop cold pools of stone-blind fish
            And witness those who have not winked at day;
            Who sink into the water’s murky deeps,
            And loiter drowsily among the weeds,
            Mustering fronds and nightshades for your charms.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            Have you encountered stray and mongreled men?
            Or lightless nooks congeal as dead men’s shades?
            Or midnight women, crablike, creep in broods?
            Shall we be leveled flat by strange disease,
            Or locusts, pirating their greedy shares?
            From sudden deaths, from wars or wild beasts?
            Shall rainstorms sink our rooftops down to jetties,
            And Tlaloc drown us in a tide of bounty,
            Or broil us in cruel sabbatical?

MOTECUHZOMA
            You must not candy up **** truth for me.
            Have you not heard our thirsting goddess cry,
            And nightly croaking from the earth’s deep faults?

MOTECUHZOMA
            There is a third chance-medley you omit:
            The several forking paths of fortune’s walks.
            Seeing a panther lurking on my left,
            Would you not show your lord the right-hand path?
            When looking back, we do not note that fork,
            Yet fate allows some swing for the intrepid.

SORCERER 2
            To cure these feline fears, don’t run
            From either, or your jaunt is done.
            But left and right will both hold good,
            If you’re the panther in the wood.

SORCERER 1
            Ah, brother, who are we to armor
            Arguments against this charmer?
            What use, to change into a cat
            As we can? He can diplomat
            His way through spells, and alchemize
            Pure, golden truths from steely lies.

SORCERER 2
            From impotence to abstinence,
            Humility from arrogance,
            Plunder into philanthropy,
            And sadism to justice.

SORCERER 3                                  See?
            No bird bones nor no wands are heeded,
            Only no character is needed.

ALL SORCERERS
            All hail the high and mighty mage,
            The gazing stock of this flat age!

MOTECUHZOMA
            Cart off to jail these jaunting cavaliers!
            Let them chirp out their pert remarks through bridles,
            And fix their flippant eyes on cold stone floors.
            Sans voice, sans books, sans tricky hands, we’ll see
            What muffled incantations might avail.
                                                                Guards exit with the Sorcerers.
            
PRIEST OF TLALOC
            These were but three. More might more prophets know.

TLACAELEL
            Well, these ones missed the mark.

MOTECUHZOMA                                         I fear not so.
                                                                                                  *All exit.

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.

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.