David Chorlton (3 poems)
The Final Battle for Tenochtitlan
In a city built of marble and feathers,
stones fall in sheets
and priests run with their hair
like roosters’ crests, crimson
with old blood. As dust
beats down the fires, Moctezuma
rolls a jaguar skull in his hands,
fingering the blue rocks
planted there. Imagining jugglers
in the streets, he calls for his canopy
of blinding green, a necklace
of live birds, and a bath filled with pearls.
He offers his aviaries
for peace, and tears the gems
from his sandals
but everything that Spaniards want
they take. Arriving with a string of beads,
they traded an empire
for musk scented glass, and claim
the markets, tobacco
and fountains. They will possess
all they destroy.
Hearts glow
on clay altars in the temple,
beating on the gentle coals
while the next god waits
with gunpowder and chiles
enough to survive. As they crumble,
the defenders cry:
Whether for us or for yourselves
you will rebuild this city.
Silk
Silk is the far side of the Tigris,
half a year
across Asia, beyond
the elephants’ homeland.
It rustles in the room
where an emperor sleeps
and lines serpentine tombs
under the sand.
Silk plains
are covered with bones.
Torn silk
marks borders all the way
from the ceramic gates to a city
afloat in palm groves
to the Chinese Wall. The steppes
are expanses of burnt silk,
black beneath the wind
guiding travelers
through the narrows
between Heaven and Earth
to the mulberry
where silkworms spin a continent
to spread
before the dark ambassadors
from the other end
of the unmapped world.
Cicada Fire
The sky in the east turns silver
for a second, then becomes
dust again.
Cicadas pour themselves back
into last year’s shells,
empty for months in sheltered
garden corners, and tune
themselves for a shrill
summer. They are an army
of musical clocks
whose wheels
grind sand, and spark
a storm of storms
chain reacting
inside every one
where the springs
melt down in the furnace.
David Chorlton has lived in Phoenix since 1978 when he moved from Vienna, Austria, with his wife. Born in Austria, he grew up in Manchester, close to rain and the northern English industrial zone. In his early 20s he went to live in Vienna and from there enjoyed many trips around Europe. In Arizona, he has grown ever more fascinated by the desert and its wildlife. As much as he loves the Southwest, he has strong memories of Vienna, and that city is the setting for his one work of fiction: The Taste of Fog, from Rain Mountain Press. Selected Poems, appeared in 2014 from FutureCycle Press, and The Bitter Oleander Press published Shatter the Bell in my Ear, translations of poems by Austrian poet Christine Lavant. A new book of older poems, Unmapped Worlds, will appear in 2021 from Future Cycle Press.