~

At the fin de siècle

myths are re-newed,

and Cibola re-sought

for thought to be true.

 

Wealth! beyond measure,

there for the leisure

to take for España,

the King, and their God;

 

but of that brought back,

was fraught with the bad,

from a land that was called

New Mexico.

 

Oñate had failed.

His dreams were derailed,

the plans to resettle

the land with pure mettle,

the Spaniards from Old Mexico.

 

With all still unsettled,

it began to unravel;

and the ‘new blood’

thought better

of whether to go.

 

No gold.  No silver.

No arable land.

No city se dice El Dorado.

The shakers and movers

over-reached their dark hand.

 

The seventeenth century

had barely began,

the full realization

had slowly sank in:

 

No cities of gold.

No promised land.

The myth would enfold

a desert wasteland.

 

This story is then

of the story untold,

from the Reconquista,

the Conquistadores,

and the Entradas

for the cities of gold.

 

The myth and the mayhem,

in a land where one plans,

but the plans won’t unfold;

in the land of New Mexico

when the land was still old.

~

 

 

 

©2013, Marvin Loyd Welborn

9 July 2013/revised: 17July2013

 

 

Poem’s Score: 2.4