Song XLII — The Song of Nezahualcoyotl
Song XLII carries the manuscript heading XLVI and the title "Ycuic Neçahualcoyotzin" — the Song of Nezahualcoyotl. It is one of the most philosophically sustained songs in the entire Cantares Mexicanos: nine sections on folio 28v, opening with an unnamed singer's grief and closing as the flower of God arrives.
Nezahualcoyotl (c. 1402–1472) was the poet-king of Texcoco, lord of Acolhuacan, and the most celebrated philosophical voice in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. His poems return obsessively to the same questions: the transience of earthly beauty, the impossibility of taking flowers to the underworld, and whether the Giver of Life — Ypalnemoa, He by Whom We Live — receives the song as an offering. This song is the most direct expression of that preoccupation in the Cantares manuscript.
The song moves in two distinct phases. In the first (§§523–525), an unnamed singer at the drum weeps because the beautiful flowers — the songs themselves — cannot be carried to Mictlan, the underworld. They only spin and revolve here in the world of the living, circling at the drum. He raises the drum, sets the eagle-jaguar warriors to dancing, seeks the song-flowers: they are the only adornment. In the second phase (§§526–531), the song shifts into Nezahualcoyotl's own voice. He is first addressed directly — "you, my prince, you, Nezahualcoyotl, you have gone to Mictlan" — then speaks as himself: the question of how to depart, the leave-taking of God, the lament for Acolihuacan (his kingdom, the Texcoco region), the famous verse that no one's home is the earth. The final section resolves in the arrival of the flower: it is God, the Giver of Life. Then the drum closes.
Key vocabulary: Ypalnemoa / Ypalnemoo (Giver of Life — He by Whom We Live; an epithet of the supreme deity, consistently identified with "Dios" in this and other colonial-era sections of the Cantares), Mictlan (the underworld, land of the dead — not a place of punishment but of continuing shadow-existence; the nine rivers and nine levels of descent), Quenonamican (the Place Where We Know Not How We Are — a Nahua term for the afterworld understood as existential uncertainty rather than paradise), Acolihuacan (the domain of the Acolhua people, centered at Texcoco — Nezahualcoyotl's kingdom; "how will the land remain, Acolihuacan?" is a grief-question about political survival after the king's death), tohuehueuh (our drum — the great vertical standing drum, the huehuetl; to- prefix = our, communal possession), quauhtlocelo (eagle-jaguar compound: quauhtli = eagle, ocelotl = jaguar; the eagle-jaguar warriors, the highest military rank in Nahua society, whose souls were promised paradise through death in battle or sacrifice), cuicaxochitl (song-flower; cuicatl = song, xochitl = flower — the compound expresses the Nahua identification of song and flower as twin forms of the sacred and beautiful), ayac ychan tlalticpac (no one's home is the earth — the most quoted philosophical verse in the Cantares Mexicanos, a concentrated statement of Nahua transience-thought), nequimilol / tonequimilol (adornment, wrapping — literally "that which wraps us"; used for both garment and the metaphysical garment of song and beauty that adorns the soul), ylacatziuh (they spin, revolve, make circles — from ilacatza, to wind or spiral; the image of songs and flowers spinning in place, unable to descend to Mictlan, circling in the world of the living like birds at the drum), momacehuali (your subjects, your commoners — macehualli = the common people, here in the possessive plural; Nezahualcoyotl's question about his subjects' welfare outlasting his death).
Song XLII spans folio 28v, sections 523–531. Folio 28v also contains §§532–533, which begin after the §531 drum close and may form the opening of Song XLIII; Kshatriya to verify whether a new rubric intervenes between §531 and §532 in the Peñafiel facsimile. Nahuatl source text accessed from the UNAM TEMOA digital platform (temoa.iib.unam.mx), Cantares Mexicanos manuscript. The Cantares Mexicanos is held at the Biblioteca Nacional de México. Digital facsimile and transcription by UNAM's Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliográficas. Translated directly from Classical Nahuatl by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
[§§523–525 — Movement I: The Singer at the Drum]
For this I weep —
I am a singer.
Oh, the songs would be carried
to the house of Mictlan,
to that place of descent.
The beautiful flowers —
they are there, already there —
they only spin
right here.
These are your adornment,
these are your riches,
you, noble princes —
the songs would be carried
to the house of Mictlan,
to that place of descent.
The beautiful flowers —
already there —
they only spin
right here.
I came here to raise our drum.
I make the eagles dance,
I make the jaguars dance.
As you depart,
the song-flower stands up.
I seek the song —
it is our adornment.
[§§526–531 — Movement II: Nezahualcoyotl's Voice]
You, my prince —
you, Nezahualcoyotl —
you have gone
to Mictlan,
to Quenonamican,
altogether there.
So it is — I weep.
I am Nezahualcoyotl.
How shall I go?
Shall I be lost,
shall I perish
in the place of death?
Already I leave you,
my God —
Giver of Life,
you command me.
I will go.
I will perish.
How will the land remain —
Acolihuacan?
Will you ever scatter
your subjects?
Already I leave you,
my God —
Giver of Life,
you command me.
I will go.
I will perish.
Only song is our adornment.
It erases our painted books —
the nobles' painted books.
Let there be joy here!
No one's home is the earth.
We shall all leave behind
the fragrant flowers.
Oh, no one shall exhaust your wealth,
Giver of Life.
Does my heart know?
For a brief moment
you came here to borrow it,
Nezahualcoyotzin.
Not again here.
No one's home is the earth —
not again on the earth.
I am only a singer.
I weep.
I remember Nezahualcoyotl.
The flower arrived here —
it is God,
the Giver of Life.
I weep.
I remember Nezahualcoyotl.
Quititi quititi quiti quiti —
tocoto tocoti —
tocototocoti —
only thus shall it return.
Colophon
Song XLII of the Cantares Mexicanos, manuscript heading XLVI, title "Ycuic Neçahualcoyotzin" (Song of Nezahualcoyotl), folio 28v, sections 523–531 (nine sections). The Cantares Mexicanos is a colonial-era manuscript of 91 Nahuatl songs compiled in the mid-sixteenth century by indigenous and colonial scribes in central Mexico, preserved at the Biblioteca Nacional de México.
This translation was made directly from Classical Nahuatl. Alonso de Molina's Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana (1571) and Frances Karttunen's An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl were consulted for lexical verification after the English draft was complete. No existing English translation was consulted during translation. The Blood Rule is maintained.
Song XLII is the most explicitly attributed song in this sequence: it names Nezahualcoyotl and frames itself as his song, his testimony, his leave-taking. Nezahualcoyotl (Nahuatl: "Fasting Coyote," 1402–1472) was the tlatoani of Texcoco and the intellectual architect of the Triple Alliance; his philosophical poems on the transience of earthly beauty are among the oldest continuously recognized poetry in the Americas. Many poems attributed to him appear across the Cantares Mexicanos, but Song XLII is distinctive in using both the third person (the unnamed singer addressing the departed lord) and the first person (Nezahualcoyotl speaking directly), blurring the line between tribute and voice.
The refrain in §§523–524 — "the songs would be carried to the house of Mictlan / to that place of descent / the beautiful flowers — they only spin right here" — is built on the Nahua grief-convention that songs and flowers (the twin symbols of beauty, creativity, and the soul's adornment) cannot accompany the dead to Mictlan. The flowers ilacatziuh — they spiral, revolve, circle — in the world of the living; they cannot descend. This circling image (from ilacatza, to wind or spiral) is the song's governing movement: the drum spins at the center, the dancers spiral around it, the beautiful things whirl in place.
Section 525 makes the ritual context explicit: the singer raises the great drum (tohuehueuh) and sets the eagle-jaguar warriors to dancing — the highest-ranking warriors in Nahua society, whose expected death in battle or sacrifice was understood as a spiritual transaction. "As you depart, the song-flower stands up" links the dead lord's departure to the drum's rising: his going is what calls the song forth.
Section 526 addresses Nezahualcoyotl directly and finally — he has gone to Mictlan, to Quenonamican. Section 527 performs the most striking shift: the singer becomes Nezahualcoyotl, speaking in the first person. "I am Nezahualcoyotl. How shall I go? Shall I be lost, shall I perish in the place of death?" The voice then addresses the Giver of Life directly — the sovereign deity — in the leave-taking formula that repeats across §§527–528: "Already I leave you, my God — Giver of Life, you command me. I will go. I will perish." The repetition with slight variation (§527 adds "How shall I go?"; §528 adds the question about Acolihuacan) is characteristic of the Cantares' cumulative grief structure.
Section 528's question about Acolihuacan — "How will the land remain? Will you ever scatter your subjects?" — is the political grief beneath the metaphysical: Nezahualcoyotl built the great aqueduct, the lake-dike, the calendar reform, and the legal code of the Triple Alliance. His departure is not only personal but cosmological.
Section 529 contains the song's most celebrated verse: ayac ychan tlalticpac — "no one's home is the earth." In Nahuatl this is six syllables and five words: ayac (no one), ichan (his/her home), tlalticpac (on the earth's surface). It is the Nahua equivalent of vanitas vanitatum, Ecclesiastes stripped to its roots: the earth itself is borrowed, and we will leave behind even the fragrant flowers.
Section 530 extends the borrowing metaphor: the Giver of Life's wealth is inexhaustible, but Nezahualcoyotl came only to borrow it — cuel achic otictlanehuico (for a brief moment you came to borrow it). The word tlanehui (to borrow) carries the resonance of Songs XXXIX and XLI (zan tictlanehuia in tlalticpac — we only came to borrow the earth). The final declaration: "I am only a singer. I weep. I remember Nezahualcoyotl." The singer has stepped back from the king's voice; he is again the mourner at the drum.
Section 531 closes with the arrival: Xochitl acico ye nican in Dios aya Ypalnemoa — "The flower arrived here — it is God, the Giver of Life." The "Xo" in the TEMOA transcription (before the editorial footnote marker dxxxvii) is treated here as an abbreviation of Xochitl (flower), consistent with the Spanish translation "Ya llegó aquí la flor, es Dios." This colonial syncretic identification of the arriving flower with "Dios / Ypalnemoa" is typical of the mid-to-late sections of the Cantares manuscript: the scribes writing in the 1560s–1580s have mapped the supreme deity of the Nahua philosophical tradition onto the Christian God, but the emotional content — weeping, remembering — remains rooted in the pre-Columbian flower-song tradition.
Boundary note: §§532–533 on folio 28v follow after the §531 drum close without a visible new rubric in the TEMOA transcription. Their content (flower-songs called to be sung, joy at the drum) suggests they begin a new song (Song XLIII). Kshatriya to verify whether the Peñafiel facsimile or the original manuscript shows a heading between §531 and §532.
Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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Source Text: Cantares Mexicanos — In Cuicatl
Classical Nahuatl source text from the UNAM TEMOA digital platform (temoa.iib.unam.mx), Cantares Mexicanos manuscript, folio 28v, sections 523–531. The Cantares Mexicanos is held at the Biblioteca Nacional de México (MS 1628 bis). Transcription by UNAM's Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliográficas under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Presented here for reference, study, and verification alongside the English translation above. TEMOA variant/footnote reference numbers (dxxx-series) have been omitted as editorial apparatus; §523 carries a scribal etcetera marker.
Heading: XLVI — Ycuic Neçahualcoyotzin
§523: A yca nichoca ya nicuicanitl y aychaa huicaloyan cuicatl ha Mictlan temohuiloya yectli ya xochitl onca ya onca a yyao ohuayancaya ylacatziuh ancana yyo etcetera
§524: Amonequimilool amonecuiltonol antepilhuan i aychaa ohuicaloyan cuicatl ha Mictlan temohuiloya yectli ya xochitl onca yaoncaa yyao ohuayancaya ylacatziuh ancana yyo
§525: Nicayaquetzacon tohuehueuh a o niquimitotia quauhtlocelo yn ca tiya yhcac in cuicaxochitl nictemoan cuicatl ye tonequimilol ayyo
§526: Tinopiltzi o tiNeçahualcoyotl otiya Mictla Quenonamica y yecen i yoncan ayyo
§527: Quiyon quiyoncaya nichoca ya a niNeçahualcoyotl huiya quen i ye noyaz oya nipolihuiz oya miquitla i ye nimitzcahuan noteouh Ypalnemoo tinechnahuatia ye niaz nipolihuiz ayyo
§528: Quen onmaniz tlallin Acolihuacan huiya cuix oc quenman oo ticmohmoyahuaz in momacehuali ye nimitzcahuan noteouh Ypalnemoo tinechnahuatia ye niaz nipolihuiz ayyo
§529: Canyio cuicatli tonequimilol quipoloa ya a in totlacuilol i tepilhuan oo maya'huilihuan nican aya ayac ychan tlalticpac oo ticyacencahuazque huelic ye xochitl ayio
§530: O ayac quitlamitaz monecuiltonol Ypalnemoa a'noyol quimati cuel achic otictlanehuico Neçahualcoyotzin ayoppatihuan nican an aya ychan tlalticpac oon yn ayoppatihuan in tlalticpacqui çan nicuicanitl ayaho on nichoca ya a niquelnamiqui Neçahualcoyotl ayyo
§531: Xochitl acico ye nican in Dios aya Ypalnemoa ayaho on nichoca ya a niquelnimiqui Neçahualcoyotl ayio — Quititi quititi quiti quiti tocoto tocoti tocototocoti çan ic mocueptiuh
Source Colophon
Nahuatl source text from the UNAM TEMOA digital facsimile (temoa.iib.unam.mx), Cantares Mexicanos manuscript, folio 28v. The manuscript is held at the Biblioteca Nacional de México (MS 1628 bis). Transcription by UNAM's Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliográficas under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Reproduced for non-commercial archival use.
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