“The goods of this life, its glories and riches, are but lent to us, its substance is an illusory shadow, and the things of today shall change on the coming of the morrow. Then gather the fairest flowers from thy gardens to bind round thy brow, and seize the joys of the present ere they perish.” In another song handed down by memory through the generations, Nezahualcoyotl said of the present, “The fleeting pomp of the world is like a green willow,….but at the end a sharp axe destroys it, a north wind fells it.”

  --Flute of the Smoking Mirror, a Portrait of Nezahualcoyotl, by Frances Gillmor (1903-1993) Albuquerque, UNM Press 1949)

[Nezahualcoyotl , "Hungry Coyote," (1402-1472) was king of Texcoco, in what is now Mexico, and a famous poet]