The Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City

Rushes fill the water garden
and purple spikes of lilies
keep the secrets of the Mayas.

Once a jaguar lay with a woman
and life on earth began.
A red locust. A nest of
coiled snakes.

When serpents touched tongues
the world was populated with dreamers who gazed
at stars and thought
perfection could be caught
with numbers.

Here a man offers a bird
to a cross of lost language.
A stone woman with cayman flesh
wears a star on her right buttock.

Heart ripping men
of the final tribe
believed the spirt must pass
through thirteen paradises.

In the place of the snake,
they listened to voices and gave
the massive feathered helmet
to the white god from the sea.

History fell into dust
another cross rose
over dark blood and labor.

The broken warriors stand
before a calendar of stone
The evening star and the morning star
divide the whole time.

Joan Colby