"XXV."
Yoyontzin, this ode is for you.
Although it won't bring you back,
It's like Rimbaud said, forget coming back.
Always arriving,
You'll go everywhere.
What I remember of you,
Yoyontzin, were your circling
Rings of song.
Your trefoil over cups at nightfall,
Never moiled.
Even when they said you wronged
Cuacuahuatzin, sending him to battle,
Such that his bride,
Light in your eyes,
Would be available.
Even then you were hungry,
Netzahualcóyotl,
And full of heart, Yoyontzin.
Two men in one king.
If your exile teaches us anything,
It's the correlative of arrival in departure
Always departing
You learned how to leave
You lived in purpresture
And today I'll say it though we live in deep censure
Did a poem come to mind when the Mexica realigned
To take your homes, Texcoco,
Your belvedere squares,
Exquisitely designed hectares,
Topoi.
I ask because the Christians
Now strip our fields of the legislative hum,
That sprouted taraxacum
Not long ago.
The motes whose modicum
Of good governance could still yield fine poems.
Your songs, not long ago.
Is there anything you wrote then
To help us now?
Oh, Netzahualcóyotl.