PART 1
The Town Crier
In the high Sierra of Oaxaca
The mushrooms of Fray Bernardino grow
The Indians all call it nanacatlh
It makes them drunk and it makes them sing of
The heretics, the sages, the witches
The golden bronze people of the teyhninti
The red blood of the sweet sacrifice
The red blood of the bird of the forest
The red blood of the Ometepec child
Sick with love and with vanity
The red blood of the now dead warriors
In the arms of the dirty young maidens
But at the end of four long centuries
Ile angel Maria Sabina was born
She eats the bitter teunanacatlh
And drinks rum and anis and pure clear water
They condemned her to death on the gallows
She cannot be saved by the wailing
Of Valentina Pavlovna Wasson
Nor by the stark ghost of Antonin Artaud
Begging mercy from the devil
Pardon from all the ruinous angels
Many flames lit to Popocatepetl
Or the total end of the world from the green gods
Have pity on Maria Sabina
And on the hearts of her hangmen
Nameless, so that one can call them
Deadly scorpions, naked, and famished
Bald from cradle-cap and ringworm
Wild from illicit astronomy
Amen and high above the hundred heads
Of the lamb let brilliant lightning bolts flash
Chorus
The whole town wants to hang Maria Sabina The whole town wants to see how the hangman from the city kills Maria Sabina The whole town wants to pull the dangling feet of the hanged Maria Sabina The whole town wants to kiss the skirt of Maria Sabina
Maria Sabina
I am a woman who cries
I am a woman who spits
I am a woman who no longer gives milk
I am a woman who speaks
I am a woman who screams
I am a woman who gives life
I am a woman who is now barren
I am a woman who floats over the waters
I am a woman who flies through the air
I am a woman of the air
I am a woman who drinks smoke
I am a woman of light
I am a woman who is pure
I am a woman of rags
I am a woman who eats flowers
I am a woman capable of suffering hunger
I am a woman who is suffering hunger
I am a woman who often suffers hunger
I am a woman without a tongue
I am a woman of sticks
I am a woman with eyes that neither see nor shine
I am a woman who sees in the shadows
I am a woman who caresses the drop of dew on the grass
I am a woman made of dust and watered wine
I am a woman who daydreams while a man rapes her
I am a woman who always gets raped again
I am a woman who does not have the strength to lift a pin
I am a woman condemned to death
I am a woman of simple inclinations
I am a woman who grows snakes and sparrows on her bosom
I am a woman who grows salamanders and ferns in her armpits
I am a woman who grows moss on her chest and belly
I am a woman whom no one ever kissed with enthusiasm
I am a woman who hides pistols and rifles in the wrinkles of her neck
I am a woman who has no teeth
I am a woman with two rows of teeth
I am a woman with three rows of teeth
I am a woman who has teeth growing in her
palate
I am a woman who eats dirt
I am a woman who cures her wounds with dirt I am a woman who does not jump with joy over the rooftops
I am a woman without nipples
I am a woman with six teats like bitches
I am a woman who was buried alive
I am a woman who enjoyed being buried alive
I am a woman who drinks her father's semen in the flower of the mandrake
I am a woman who smokes aromatic herbs in a pipe made of vertebrae from a blood-drained martyr
I am a woman who is almost blind
I am a woman who is almost deaf
I am a woman who is almost dumb and paralyzed I am a woman who hovers around urinals and rubble
I am a woman whose belly sings
I am a woman who ignores sin
I am a woman who undresses and dresses with freedom
I am a woman who laughs for no reason at all
I am a woman who is faithful
I am a woman who is respectful
I am a woman who is indecent
I am a woman who grows frogs and water snakes in the sink
I am a woman wrapped in a multicolored shroud
I am a woman with brittle nails I am a woman who is losing her nails
I am a woman who cannot remember when she lost her nails
I am a woman who doesn't know solfege
I am a woman who feeds fleas out of charity
I am a woman with fetid breath
I am a woman who is fat and unhealthy
I am a woman whose vagina and anus were sewn UP am a woman whom no one looks in the eye am a woman who seeks shelter where she can, for example under bridges or in the beds of lepers
I am a woman who loves fire am a woman who carries fire from one place to another
I am a woman incapable of spitting lire
Δ.