Malinche

t rasa

In a land where your children
spit the name La Malinche,
your bones lie unmarked,
unflowered in a secret place,
perhaps the foot of Popocatepetl,
or Iztacihuatl.
Names that flowed from your tongue
in liquid Nahuatl song.

Maybe in a must earth
shallow under El Zocalo
where you bore the hairy,
fetid weight of Cortés
and gave birth to a people
whose faces pucker about their eyes
as they expectorate:
Eve, of Culua-Mexica,
Helen, of Tenochtitlan,
La Chingada.

Perhaps they leach
in the heat of Potonchan
where you spoke another tongue
like breath through a flute,
like water falling.
Can you wince
ten-thousand times a day
and still forgive your children
as you forgave your royal mother
for selling you to el puerco,
who gave you and gave you
to other pigs.

Can your ghost find sleep
in the cool breezes off Texcoco
where you stood between two empires,
conquered both and wed the words
traitor and translator in dialects
you did not live to hear?
Does knowing you gave birth
to Paz, Neruda, Vasconcelos
give you some small quiet?
Did Diaz ever say he loved you?
Would he sometimes call you
Doña Marina to your face?

Now, only the Vulcan lovers
Smoking Mountain and White Lady
know who you really are,
woman of this place,
where the dust of your bones
is trod by donkey hooves
and the callused soles
of your Mestizo children
who slaver your name.
Where only the Jaltipan
Iguana eaters hear you
weeping for them.