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A Division of Gods

while visiting Templo Mayor in Mexico City, I reckon:

walking the same land Cortés did/walked/tried to own.

                 in the shadow of his Cathedral,
                               I shudder.
     Templo Mayor is now a museum.
                    are there records of Black people
   visiting plantations and crying?

    no history is interchangeable. I am grasping.
                    Templo Mayor is open 9AM - 5PM today.
           what makes people want to tour the "end"
      of something? Archaeologists

   had to break the temple walls     in order to learn more about them,
      fracturing      further violence.

                   across from the Cathedral, someone sells Aztec
                   designs            on t-shirts.
     no mention of genocide    spiritual or otherwise
                         so
  everyone runs
         their fingers     along the tourist attraction.

the Cathedral's holier house
             waits its turn to sink
                        & my classmate remarks
             on the tour guide's "good English."

   I enter the Cathedral
                        so I cannot be afraid of it
             but only after returning
to the temple.                  & I do not touch the stones—
    each volcanic rock carried by hand  to the construction.
each stone split
             by European hand &

                         thrust into the Cathedral.
  
   I don't know if you understand the birth of nations:

         everything old is made to look new
                                    or gone.
Ariana Brown, "A Division of Gods" from We Are Owed.  Copyright © 2021 by Ariana Brown.  Reprinted by permission of Grieveland.
Source: We Are Owed (Grieveland)