Native American Life

Aztec Poems
The earth shakes: the Mexica [Aztec] begins his song:
He makes the Eagles and Ocelots dance with him!Come to see the Huexotzinca:
On the dais of the Eagle he shouts out,Loudly cries the Mexica.
The battlefield is the place: where one toasts the divine liquor in war,where are stained red the divine eagles,where the tigers howl,where all kinds of precious stones rain from ornaments,where wave headdresses rich with fine plumes,where princes are smashed to bits.
There is nothing like death in war,nothing like the flowery death so precious to Him who gives life:far off I see it: my heart yearns for it!
And they called it Teotihulcan because it was the place where the lords were buried.Thus they said:
'When we die,truly we die not,because we will live, we will rise,we will continue living, we will awaken. This will make us happy.'
Thus the dead one was directed,when he died:
'Awaken, already the sky is rosy,already dawn has come,already sing the flame-coloured guans,the fire-coloured swallows,already the butterflies fly.'
Thus the old ones said that who has died has become a god,they said: 'He has been made a god there,meaning 'He has died.'
Even jade is shattered,Even gold is crushed,Even quetzal plume are torn . . .One does not live forever on this earth:We endure only for an instant!
Will flowers be carried to the Kingdom of Death:Is it true that we are going, we are going? Where are we going, ay, where are we going?Will we be dead there or will we live yet?Does one exist again?
Perhaps we will live a second time?Thy heart knows:Just once do we live!.Like a quetzal plume, a fragrant flower, friendship sparkles:like heron plumes, it weaves itself into finery.
Our song is a bird calling out like a jingle:how beautiful you make it sound!Here, among flowers that enclose us,among flowery boughs you are singing.

Reflections: Interperting this literature is difficult if not carefully read and deciphered. Through my first reading I thought the author was just telling about the life after death, then once read again I realized that the death is apart of their cultural and is worshipped in their culture.

Dear Diary,

After reading this poem, I realize what it means now to die in my culture. Before I thought that once you died you laid in the ground and degrated, but after reading one of my own's poem I am aware that once you descend from the physical world you are later living again by being called to join the other gods and become one yourself. Until my reading of this poem I never felt so connected to the ones that have passed in my tribes, and now I am able to tell the ones in my family to not shed tears of sorrow but tears of joy, because our tribal warriors have left here to be a better warrior that looks upon us.