- TONANTZIN
- All right that's enough.
- Over four centuries of this nonsense
- is quite quite enough.
- Our Lady. Her picture on
- Cuauhtlatohuc's robe.
- Roses in December. Castilian roses.
- Mary, Queen of the Americas. Mary.
- .
- Listen and listen closely.
- .
- My name is Tonantzin, mother of all the Aztecs.
- That was and is my holy place, the high ground
- where I was worshiped for a thousand years,
- the ritual place where Moctezuma
- received Cortez into our ancient world,
- before the betrayals began.
- I gave you life, I will see you into earth
- when you die and I am not your Lady,
- not some wispy Florentine girl
- posing in pretty robes for a Raphael to paint.
- I have bones, substance, the presence of command,
- and I wear the clothes of my people, my arms bare
- in the heat, crowblack hair gleaming in the sun.
- I do not look down daintily but straight
- into your wavering eyes, seeing you
- for all you are and are not. Unlike this
- Mary girl, I am not easy to live with.
- I do stand on the moon, I do radiate light–
- even fools get some things right.
- And I take some satisfaction in the spread
- of this frail usurper, this Madonna of Guadalupe,
- as her sweet image appears around the world.
- They could not have taken away my people
- without her but in truth, I have the people still, and more.
- You know, you know, that this Mary thing
- stands for me, however palely, that she is me,
- Tonantzin, that she is Isis, Astarte, Freya and Sekhmet,
- all of us who have been banned from your world
- by the priesthoods of the timid.
- You put this Mary on your dashboards
- and on your refrigerators because your fears
- allow us only insipid form.
- Still we reign in your lives,
- creating it all, behind this silly girl.
- Mauhcatlayecoantin. No mauhcatlayecoantin.
- Fools. My fools.
