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ANCIENT MAYAN POETRY
INTRODUCTION
THE SONGS OF DZITBALCHE
THE LIFE OF AH BAM
INTRODUCTION
The Songs of Dzitbalche include most of the ancient Maya lyric poetry that has survived. In these songs, the poet speaks of personal feelings and ideas of love, philosophy, ancient rituals, and spiritual values.
The original title page reads, "The Book of the Dances of the Ancients that it was the custom to perform here in the towns when the whites had not yet arrived." The tide "Songs of Dzitbalche" was given to the collection by the first translator into Spanish, Alfredo Barrera Vasquez, and it is by this name that it is generally known. Written above the title is the word kolomche-a ceremonial dance-and below it is the first poem, "I Will Kiss Your Mouth."
The manuscript itself was probably written in the eighteenth century, though it could be a copy of an earlier manuscript. Some of the material it contains is obviously much older, probably from the fifteenth century. A number of the poems incorporate fragments of ancient ceremonies; others are descriptions of those ceremonies. It is not always possible to distinguish between the two. The poems about the ceremonies were written by Ah Bam during the colonial period, while the ceremonies described are clearly ancient.
Many of the songs begin with an expository section explaining the ceremony related to the song. Most of the poems use the most typical device of Mayan poetry: couplets, the repeating of key words and phrases in consecutive lines. There are, however, very few choruses or refrains.
Four of the pieces could be classified as love (and ritual love) songs: I Will Kiss Your Mouth; Let Us Go to the Receiving of the Flower; Flower Song; and To Kiss Your Lips Beside the Fence Rails.
Two are prayers: To the Great Lord Ah Kulel; The Mourning Song of the Poor Motherless Orphan.
One is a hymn to sunrise: For the Traveler on the Road at Dawn.
At least four of the "songs" appear to have been spoken or chanted like poems. As Barrera Vásquez states, "Although we give the tide of songs to all the texts of the codex, some of these appear to be more narrations or explications without any characteristic...