Aluvion at Yungay
One evening earthquake in the cordillera blanca
caused the slide,
and half a mountain
dropped
into the lake
to force
a rupture in the
accidental boulder dam
to empty out
some 15 million cubic tons
of water,
rock
and mud
upon the happy Sunday village
30 seconds down below.
Eighteen hundred there,
the tremors barely past,
arising thankful,
looking up,
might have:
one avé breathed into the blast,
one genuflection just before the wave,
one raging scream,
a turning half away, perhaps,
to shelter babies at the breast
or clutch beloved hand and stare
in lover’s eyes before
the end.
Sunrise at Machu Picchu
Before dawn, crowding buses,
Strangers, coffee-quenched
And muttering sleepy platitudes,
Lurch up a dozen hairpin turns,
Tramp through the turnstiles – one more time
That archeology will sell its soul
To little troops of tourists -- bunching in
All camera-twitchy, multi-stylish dressed,
All guidebook knowing and assured
We’ll each find best locations for the view
Of sunrise from the sun’s-gate mountain pass
Across to Waynu-Picchu and the sundial there.
Just twenty minutes more. The pre-dawn light
Exposes us, so many woolen bundles,
Perched on ledge and grass
With chattering explications from the text,
Or memory, or the words of Quechuan guides.
And then,
The slow sun reaches out
For purchase on the clouds,
And levels off,
And then starts slanting down
To touch
So lightly on the facing rock
As might have touched the gate,
The last retreating Inca from this place
Four hundred years before,
Purging his memory of these sacred stones
Lest any least remark let in the horde
Of barbarous foreign pirates to despoil
Where daily did his gods of earth and sun
Their sacred consummation re-enact.
But here,
This instant,
As the new day bonds us now,
All babble ceases on the thin cool air
In throats that choke back tears, enthralled
As children;
Silent,
Still,
Amazed.
Too worldly to remember any prayers, but sure
That this is now, if ever, a prayerful time.
Marred, only then, we realize,
By one unconscious, pompous, strident, bleat
Of some guide, lecturing on, so self-absorbed
It takes our full collective voice
To force compliance and a grudging halt
To let this morning act complete itself,
And we
Who had no earlier alliance, find
Complicit strength,
A common cachement for
The energy inherent with the dawn
So that, a few hours on
When all the new arrivals from the train
From Cusco plod on in,
We, like those last proud warrior-priests,
Turn to the west,
Secure our memories silently,
And leave the sacred valley to the mob.