Aztec Mask
Aztec Mask - meaning Summary
Pride Facing Oblivion
The speaker seeks an image of a human face that meets life’s consuming forces with unshaken pride and endurance. Confronting jaws, dust and changing years, that face persists unchanged even in death. The Aztec mask appears as that emblem: simultaneously a cry, a prayer and a beaten relic, proud and defiant yet awaiting oblivion. The poem registers tension between lasting dignity and inevitable decay.
Read Complete AnalysesI wanted a man's face looking into the jaws and throat of life With something proud on his face, so proud no smash of the jaws, No gulp of the throat leaves the face in the end With anything else than the old proud look: Even to the finish, dumped in the dust, Lost among the used-up cinders, This face, men would say, is a flash, Is laid on bones taken from the ribs of the earth, Ready for the hammers of changing, changing years, Ready for the sleeping, sleeping years of silence. Ready for the dust and fire and wind. I wanted this face and I saw it today in an Aztec mask. A cry out of storm and dark, a red yell and a purple prayer, A beaten shape of ashes waiting the sunrise or night, something or nothing, proud-mouthed, proud-eyed gambler.
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