The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n
John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I, 255-256
Olmec Vision Autumn's the strange time. The flick of distant sun angles dream over the leaf-stirred pond, and though the sky is ancient blue my bone age creeps and crawls. A good time to be lonely, seize that lucid look before gold clamps the digits and gangrene blackens my springfed eye. With the dawn of each lesser day, a monk whispers this dead news gently. The oak wave their caution, and maple bark out stop, but like the monk they cannot hide the gold,
so Eagle corporate papa dogs, director-feathered, board-room majestic, preen in three-piece greed. Their talons reach even here turning snakes that squeeze hearts through the mouths of billions. Magic brokers, mighty achievers, (like Olmec, like Toltec, like Mexica) they strut before the altar of the bill and lift toward the sun handfuls of dripping, beating wealth and bleed themselves horny while rock-frenzied crowds suck up this fraud then mosh out the dregs at the foot of this temple.
For me there has come a time of choice, a final, sole great hour of sharing like the insistent ring of the phone or incessant drone of the screen. Will I reach for the potter's mug-- a brace of steaming chocolate, palms cupped about its heat brought slowly to the lips, sipped, savored then pressed against a cheek and ignore The New Yorker's voice: "Put down" or "Wait for a time of eclipse"?
Or will I come like Cortes in the blue, thin-aired dawn? Crest a volcanic ridge, see spread beneath like a bridal cake a metropolis glisten and float on a lake, its causeways spidering out empire and god? Montezuma, supported on the arms of his lords promising gold, promising silver. . . . And like Cortes swollen inside his armor say, "I, Smoking Mirror, Queztalcoatl, strangler of wives, come from the East to fill this valley with fumes"?
Or will I note Malinche between-- her redwood dugout plying the water of words that separate gods, this blue inversion of fact and faith? Her child hums at her nipple. She knows nothing but the children can be saved so weaves them into feathers and songs that wrap us still and turn us away from the glass and stainless steel and the bullets which ricochet off platinum in the finest vaults of our city, that mausoleum
of elevated boxes which shelter the brokered genteel. A survivor must this chill and hung-over morning reel from this conquest of Manhatten where Cortes swaggers above the skyline. His helmet gleams in the ozone; his breastplate mirrors sun, leather breeches taut above the scrapers. He plants one boot atop each Twin Tower and with a mailed fist pushes forward a gold-encrusted cross. Behind him a mounted officer prances, the flat of his sword thwacking more conquistadores forward
to pile against the edge. With his other glove Cortes reaches toward Montezuma tottering atop the lightning rod of his empire like a Kong swatting flies until both tumble down the scrapers of empires which cannot balance, neither can art, that easy melt of chocolate-- only pastel of words, that woman, and her iridescent ruby throats: Their nectar, the reds, the greens-- the language of a garden. These dart backward, frontward, naked as morning and glory, cradle the plush pile of growing long, circle her flame, suckle her milk, and ring out this bursting bell of story.
Rodger Martin
If Castilians go to heaven, I’d rather spend eternity in hell: Hatuey, Cuban cacique when asked by a Spanish priest if he would convert to christianity before his execution in 1511
Bartolome de Las Casas, Historia de las Indies