"Elegies on the Fall of the City"

Three Aztec poems reprinted from The Broken Spears: The Aztec
Account of the Conquest of Mexico. Edited and with an introduction
by Miguel León-Portilla. Translated from Nahuatl into Spanish by
Angel Maria Garibay K. English translation by Lysander Kemp, 1992

Created c. 1521

Unknown Aztec poet, "The Fall of Tenochtitlan"

The three poems featured in this entry were created by Aztecs who were in Tenochtitlán (pronounced tay-notch-teet-LAHN) at the time of the Spanish conquest of 1521 and survived to tell about it. Two of the three poems were found in a song collection called Cantares mexicanos (Mexican...