The Tree of the Sun

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Da Silva painted lines of snow far above Tenochtitlan, ancient Mexico, in the seemingly breathless air of extinct volcanoes through which the conquistadores came….

He painted their descent into a green field that bordered a balcony on which the sun-king Montezuma stood. He painted the sun-king retiring into his palace; painted the blow he received from the hand of the conquistadores, from the hand of his own people as well. A blow that was but a glancing blow, that left him untouched, or, on closer scrutiny of the canvas by each eye within or without it, so subtly bruised as to appear scarcely wounded at all. So that his death from the blow he received was a mystery to those who were in attendance upon him. It was as if he wished to go, to slip away from them when they least bargained for it and as he died he secreted his last thoughts about brute assassin threaded into paradoxical arrow of liberation or tenderness within the wall of extinct volcanoes far overhead or within the gorgeous apparition of the sun painted indoors close to the bed on which he lay. His was a death-mask of the elements’ interchangeable ruses of tyranny and love, seasonal birth and seasonal resurrection, each day’s carpet of earth, each day’s tree of the sun, each day’s journey backwards or forwards in time, each day’s everlasting feud…. Yet pattern of relief.

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