He crouched there, hidden like a jaguar on the hill,
a thin Aztec boy hunching in the grass
that tufted beneath a line of gnarled trees
and watched anxiously as the warriors below
bellowed and thumped the weave upon their chests,
plumes now quivering like flames above their heads,
and shook their spears at the threatening soldiers
amassing across the field, brandishing swords
and fingering muskets, armored breastplates
glinting in the sun, helmets of iron
half-shuttered and black, crowning
their heads like the mandibles of ants.
He shuddered then, but swallowed a scream
when the cunning Cortez burst into the field
mounted on horseback, his black Spanish stallion
glistening with sweat, rearing and stamping,
circling and whinnying. Nothing he'd dreamt in any dark dream
had ever drawn such a man, master of such a beast.
No Centaur in the New World had ever burst
pell mell between the bluffs as hideous with malice,
as magnified by haunch and hoof,
as Cortez did upon the field that day.
And then came the rest, exploding through the trees,
forty mounted men, each upon a beast as brutal as the first,
followed by the armored troops,
their standards blazoned with a terrible Cross,
till he wished his eyes had suddenly gone blind
before the sickening sight of what they saw.
The horses thundered forward, their riders screamed,
swords in the air and firing their guns,
as once-great Aztecs broke rank and scattered,
cleaved like water by a Clipper's prow,
the rest soon trampled or slashed upon the run,
blood like roses sprouting from their necks
as they stumbled their last steps, bewildered by fate,
and fell like stalks of corn upon the ground.
Sonoma, CA January 2014
©Michael Miley All rights reserved.
AUDIO-VIDEO PRESENTATION BY AUTHOR
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