WORK IN PROGRESS -- COMING SOON.
The poems in this book are original, written in a slightly modified Nahua style to make them more akin to the modern eye and ear.
I wrote these poems because I love the Nahuatl language and its artistry. These verses are my attempt to marry the Nahua love of metaphor and contradiction with the complexities that define our own society. Within them I've tried to recapture the vision of the cuicanime ("Singers of Songs") rather than simply replicate their style, and to evoke among American poets and lovers of poetry a greater awareness of these remarkable ancients whose influence once radiated from the "Naval of the Moon" (Tenochtitlan) west to Tabasco, south to Guatemala-Belize, and north beyond Tula toward that elusive dream called Aztlan.
Like most Americans of Mexican ancestry, my roots go deep into the mestizo earth from which sprang modern Mexico, so I may briefly bask in the glory of those Lords of Anahuac who were fathers to us all.
Being familiar with the sites, the culture and the Nahua concept of Ometeotl's cosmos (He who created Himself, then created all else), I assert that the vessel which best preserves the essence of their culture is the "flor y canto" (in xochityl, in cuicatl); that which we English speakers know as "Flower and Song." More, even, than the splendid ruins those "People of the Maguey Hare" left behind, their poetry conveys how much their lives resembled ours.
As we cross the bridge of flor y canto, five centuries fall away and we understand that what they felt we feel, that what made them laugh, cry, fearful, proud or happy, are the same things that affect us; for in all hearts there's the knowledge that our stay on earth must be brief and that all our glories will one day be ashes unless we've learned to gather flowers and sing new songs.
