Look upon me and see your creation:
A God carved in stone, communing with the Heavens;
You have closed my eyes in supplication;
Parted my lips in frozen meditation;
Your prayers are still in my mouth,
Waiting to be spoken.
Gaze upon me;
See how my arms reach out to your world,
Look how the palms of my hands signal a benediction:
Serene stone, God of the corn, crowned with a headdress of
corn;
Strands of silky hair spilling out of the leaves you have
placed around my face;
A statue, small and divine; imbibed with the power you have
given me.
I am the benevolent Mayan maize God;
Born of the earth like you and your kind,
I too am bound by the laws of the earth:
The sowing of the seed, the reaping of the crop and the
ploughing of the soil,
So that I may live again and by doing so, give you life:
The womb, the grave and hope of rebirth,
A cycle of belief as frail as flesh and as enduring as the
corn, yellow as the sun.
See how I sit so very calm,
Contemplating the mystery of life in this land of ours;
Remembering how the first mother-father was modelled by the
early Gods from maize itself, causing the sun, moon and stars to appear to
bless their mortal creation.
Watch how I guard your crops from high;
Set on the steps of a monumental pyramid with other stone
guardians;
Made by you who are made by us;
Sentinels of stone communing with nature on your behalf,
So that each new season will give up its bounty once again
And no one will have to bear the pangs of hunger and
starvation.
You have given me this task,
But the world is a different place now;
Corn is a commodity, a fuel for industry;
People have even probed its ancient secrets to alter its
genetic inheritance,
And the forests where your Gods once thrived are diminished
by the growth of commerce and market forces.
The corn still grows as yellow of the sun, but somehow
marred and different.
It seems that not even a Maize God can halt progress...
Yet still my eyes are closed in supplication;
My lips are parted in frozen meditation;
And your prayers are still in my mouth,
Waiting to be spoken.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2Wt2ttbbXsDv31ZNr4ThyC2/episode-transcript-episode-9-maya-maize-god-statue
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Illustration by the artist Ryan Leigh
