Alice Corbin

From “New Mexico Folk-songs”

AS I came down from Cundiyo,

Upon the road to Chimayo

I met three women walking;

Each held a sorrow to her breast,

And one of them a small cross pressed—

Three black-shawled women walking.

“Now why is it that you must go

Up the long road to Cundiyo?”

The old one did the talking:

“I go to bless a dying son.”

“And I a sweetheart never won.”

Three women slowly walking.

The third one opened wide her shawl

And showed a new-born baby small

That slept without a sorrow:

“And I, in haste that we be wed—

Too late, too late, if he be dead!

The Padre comes tomorrow.”

As I went up to Cundiyo,

In the grey dawn from Chimayo,

I met three women walking;

And over paths of sand and rocks

Were men who carried a long box—

Beside three women walking.