One by one I proclaim your songs:
       I bind them on, gold crabs, as if they were anklets:
       like emeralds I gather them.
Clothe yourself in them: they are your riches.
       Bathe in feathers of the quetzal,
your treasury of birds’ plumes, black and yellow,
the red feathers of the macaw
beat your drums about the world:
deck yourself out in them: they are your riches.

Where am I to go, whither?
       The road’s there, the road to Two-Gods.
       Well, who checks men here,
here where all lack a body,
at the bottom of the sky?
Or, maybe, it is only on Earth
that we lose the body?
       Cleaned out, rid of it completely,
His House: there remains none on this earth!
Who is it that said:
Where find them? our friends no longer exist!

Will he return will Prince Cuautli ever return?
Will Ayocuan, the one who drove an arrow into the sky?
Shall these two yet gladden you?
       Events don’t recur: we vanish once only.
Hence the cause of my weeping:
Prince Ayocuan, warrior chief
governed us harshly.
His pride waxed more, he grew haughty
here among men.
       But his time is finished…
he can no longer come to bow down before Father and Mother….
This is the reason for my weeping:
He has fled to the place where all lack a body.


 = Leon Branton