Does the Fruit Stay Forever on the Branch?

A flower-song I composed in the voice of Tecayehuatzin, a fifteenth-century ruler of Huexotzinco in central Mexico. Tecayehuatzin convened a group of poet leaders for a symposium on the theory and practice of in xochitl in cuicatl (basically, poetry) - you can read an excerpt of a play I based on the symposium. The play is now available for purchase at One Act Play Depot. Here Tecayehuatzin addresses himself, in the style, to another poet, Cuauhtencoztli, whom I cast in the play as his son.

As the sapling grows,
as its shoots seek the face of the sun,
its growth is a flowing, like a fountain, like a spring,
with the waters of the earth, with the life of the earth.

And as the sun follows the rain,
so does the fruit spring from the flower,
from its vibrant emanations,
from its fragrant exhalations.

Like unto this growth, the youth who stretches and fills,
who seeks the face of the sun,
whose leaps and dives give grace uprooted to the yearnings of the sapling,
will in his own way, in her own way,
bear the fruit of his acts, bear the flower of her breath,
springing from the nourishment of the earth.

Does the fruit stay forever on the branch?
The fruit must be consumed when it is ripe.
Do the flowers stay forever on the tongue?
The flowers must be sung when they're in bloom.

In the rhythm of our songs, of our mouths and of our hands,
we build on the rhythms of the flower and of the fruit,
of the earth and of the sky,
of the jaguar and of the eagle.

Does the fruit stay forever on the branch?
The fruit must be consumed when it is ripe.
Do the flowers stay forever on the tongue?
The flowers must be sung when they're in bloom.