Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons^™

Drum Of Poetry, Drum Of War, Willard Gingerich

Department of English Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The Aztec upright drum, tlalpan huehuetl, stood totally silent in the Metropolitan exhibit from Mexico, headless, covered with a swirling visual text which includes two carved eagles and three jaguars, each uttering the sign of holy conflagration in war," blazing water" on one side a transfigured warrior rising up in eagle attire—quauhtlehuanitl" eagle rising," a figure of the sun from dawn to midday—and opposite him a drooping eye at the axis of a quincunx, pierced south to north by a short, angular dart—the calendrical sign 4 Motion, the name of this fifth age of the world, destined to collapse in …