Cardinal Points
Carlos Sherman (1934-2005)
Fragments from Cardinal Points.
Seven was their number
Those white roadways
Between sightless swamps
And the dead marshes.
So Ixchel had willed it,
Goddess of the moon.
And one after one
The luminous sea-shells were milled
On the Carib shore,
And mingled together
With fine sand and sweet water,
So that even in those nights
Of dread
When Ixchel hid herself
Within leaden stormclouds
Sacbe would light
Every Indian step.
Sacbe,
The Road of the Maya
Linking villages and souls
With its inner light
Bidding them walk in silence
Pondering with delight
The chances and changes
Of this life.
Seven was their number
Those white roadways,
And from that time
Ixchel has lived in all places,
The light wrote its poems,
Those seven poems
For the unknown Indian.
