As the chattel made into heroes of the story,
With sports where the victors who evoked the jaguar spirit
Were purified and then decapitated (the highest glory),
And with numerals that expanded through posterity,
Past the corn, beans and honey from the local cenotes.
There is no time, so it fairly can be said
That the tours are but a prelude to
The ritual enslavements, the glorification of murder,
The red-painted faces in gold armor carrying torches
That the tour guides cannot comprehend or foresee.
That is why they need our prayers.
Decapitated jaguars hold their heads
While the night is a jaguar holding the earth
For the future light of the distant ones
To electrify each stone in a transcendent glow,
The hoops they say are for games conductors
Of current that flows up the pyramid walls
Where the giant ones live on slabs in meditation
Calling through the portal with the other chambers in the series
Aligned with the galaxies to the stars they called their home,
So lonely they made even their lowly prisoners sad,
Who served them as desolate Gods, and so remain
Desolate to this day, as their people
Market calendars and claim the invention of zero
And, in quiet tones, explain how the population dwindled
As an act of will, what separates the human from the animal,
To winnow the herd to equilibrium through sacrifice
(The highest glory), the spider monkey cenote nearby,
As the locals know, filled with infant skulls.
Kalupte the black bird stands in stelae stone here
As on the t-shirts in the store,
The last of the Mayan kings, they say,
As a black vulture sits at the top of Nohoch Mul.
The God of the bees is turned upside down
And they wait in sadness for the Gods to return.
The shaman takes sap from the tree of life, Yaxche,
With its nine roots (for its nine eras of construction)
And 13 branches (for the 13 gods) to pacify the wait.
The undeciphered stone sits undisturbed
At the head of the temple. Time will someday melt into truth
In Coba's turbulent waters, where stillness presides.
