The Eagle's Throne

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1 Stop asking me questions/let me imagine/that the past does not exist/and that we were born/the very instant/we first met. .

2 The eagle, being an animal,/had its picture drawn on coins./Before climbing up the nopal/it asked for permission first.

3 See “Malintzin of the Maquilas” in Fuentes’s The Crystal Frontier.

4 The colonel asks him,/how many men are with you?/Eight hundred soldiers/led through the mountains by Mariano Mejía.

5 Valentín, being a man,/told them nothing.

6 And I am one of the true men/who invented the Revolution. .

7 See “A Capital Girl” in The Crystal Frontier.

8 See “The Line of Oblivion” in The Crystal Frontier.

9 There nightfall/is so bleak that one might say:/night thus begotten will be eternal.