Connecting Maya Ruins Art and Writing

I love it when writers are inspired by art. Richard Raymond III created the Shakespearean sonnet below based on my paintings and what he remembers from Mayan history. You can see the imagery as you read.

Thank you, Richard!

ROMANCES AMONG THE RUINS *

"... And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything."
– Shakespeare, "As You Like It"

THE FACE IN THE SERPENT’S JAWS

Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent-God
No "still unravish’d bride" is this stark stone,
No "foster-child of silence". Undulant,
For centuries lay dreaming, all alone
Amid the undergrowth and forest-plant
He lay with gaping maw, whence peered a face ...
(Of anguish? or, perhaps, of godly birth ...
Was it emerging, as the fount of a great race?
Or being swallowed, to increase the serpent’s girth?)
Only the sculptor knew, who seemed to mock
Divinity, disgorging living head,
Hewn by stone tools out of the living rock,
Where now remains no witness but the dead,
Not even ghosts to weep, betrayed, undone,
Upon these steps, the Temple of the Sun.

Copyright Richard Raymond III