The Memory of Fire Trilogy: Genesis, Faces and Masks, and Century of the Wind

by Eduardo Galeano

For the Maya, time was born and had a name when the sky didn’t exist and the earth had not yet awakened. The days set out from the east and started walking. The first day produced from its entrails the sky and the earth. The second day made the stairway for the rain to run down. The cycles of the sea and the land, and the multitude of things, were the work of the third day. The fourth day willed the earth and the sky to tilt so that they could meet. The fifth day decided that everyone had to work. The first light emanated from the sixth day. In places where there was nothing, the seventh day put soil; the eighth plunged its hands and feet in the soil. The ninth day created the nether worlds; the tenth earmarked for them those who had poison in their souls. Inside the sun, the eleventh day modeled stone and tree. It was the twelfth that made the wind. Wind blew, and it was called spirit because there was no death in it. The thirteenth day moistened the earth and kneaded the mud into a body like ours. Thus it is remembered in Yucatán. (208)