Several post-Conquest native sources record laments and poems about the fall of Mexico-Tenochtitlán. The earliest is a remarkable annal, written perhaps as early as 1528 in Nahuatl, but already using the Spanish alphabet. Probably the oldest prose account of the Conquest in a native source, it preserves this wonderful poem:

Broken spears lie in the roads;
we have torn our hair in grief.
The houses are roofless now, and their walls
are reddened with blood.

Worms are swarming in the streets and plazas,
and the walls are splattered with gore.
The water has turned red, as if it were dyed,
and when we drink it,
it has the taste of brine.

We have pounded our hands in despair
against the adobe walls,
for our inheritance, our city, is lost and dead.
The shields of our warriors were its defense,
but they could not save it

We have chewed dry twigs and salt grasses;
we have filled our mouths with dust and bits of adobe;
we have eaten lizards, rats and worms....