And all this happened to us.
We saw it,
we marveled at it.
With this sad and mournful destiny
we saw ourselves afflicted.
On the roads lie broken arrows,
our hair is in disarray.
Without roofs are the houses,
and red are their walls with blood.
Worms multiply in the streets and squares,
and on the walls brains are spattered.
Red are the waters, as if they were dyed,
and when we drink,
it seems water of saltpeter.
We have struggled against the walls of adobe,
but our heritage was a net made of holes.
Our shields were our protection
but not even with shields could we defend ourselves.
We have eaten branches of linnet,
we have chewed upon salty witch grass,
bits of adobe and ground earth,
small lizards, rats, worms. . . .
We ate meat
when it was scarcely on the fire.
When the meat was cooked,
we snatched it out of
the very coals and ate it.
They put a price on us.
The price for a young person, for a priest,
a child or a young girl.
And it was enough: for a common man
the price was only two handfuls of corn
or ten portions of caked mosquitoes,
our price was only
twenty portions of salty witch grass.
Gold, jade, rich mantles,
plumage of quetzal,
all that has value
was then counted as nothing. . . .