-
Stone within stone,
and man, where was he? Air within air,
and man, where was he?...
-
Time within time, and
man, where was he? Were you also the shattered
fragment...
-
...of indecision, of
hollow eagle which, through the streets
of today, in the old tracks...
-
...through the leaves
of accumulated autumns, goes pounding at
the soul into the tomb?
-
I question you, salt
of the highways, show me the trowel: allow
me, architecture...
-
...to fret stone stamens
of air into the emptiness, scrape the intestine
until I touch mankind.
-
Macchu Picchu, did
you lift stone above stone on a groundwork
of rags?...
-
Coal upon coal and,
at the bottom, tears? Fire-crested gold,
and in that gold, the bloat dispenser of
this blood?
-
Let me have back the
slave you buried here!
-
Wrench these lands
the stale bread of the poor, prove me the
tatters...
-
...on the serf, point
out his window.
-
Tell me how he slept
when alive...
-
...whether he snored...
-
...his mouth agape
like a dark scar...
-
...worn by fatigue
into the wall.
-
That wall, that wall!
If each stone floor...
-
...weighed down his
sleep, and if he fell...
-
...beneath them, as
if beaneath a moon, with all that sleep!
-
Ancient America, bride
in her veil of sea, your fingers also...
-
...from the jungle's
edges to the rare height of gods...
-
...under the nuptial
banners of light and reverence,
-
...blending with thunder
from the drums and lances...
-
...your fingers, your
fingers also...
-
...that bore the rose
in mind and hairline of the cold...
-
...into the radiant
wave of matter and adamantine hollows-
-
...with them, with
them, buried America, were you in that
great depth,
-
...the bilious gut,
hoarding the eagle hunger?
-
When, like a horseshoe
of rusting wing-cases, the furious condor
batters my temples in the order of flight...
-
...and his tornado
of carnivorous feathers sweeps the dark
dust down slanting stairways, I do not
see the rush of the bird,
-
nor the blind sickle
of his talons- I see the ancient being,
the slave, the sleeping one,
-
...blanket his fields-a
body, a thousand bodies, a man, a thousand
women swept by the sable whirlwind, charred
with rain and night,
-
...stoned with a leaden
weight of statuary: Juan Splitstones, son
of Wiracocha,
-
Juan Splitstones, son
of Wiracocha,
-
Juan Coldbelly, heir
of the green star,
-
Juan Barefoot, grandson
to the turquoise, rising to birth with
me as my own brother.