THE HEIGHTS OF MACCHU PICCHU

My husband recently returned from hiking the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu. My first introduction to this "Lost City" was through Pablo Neruda's poem, a portion of which is below. For the past several days he has been telling me about his trek over this amazing road build centuries ago by the Inca before the brutal Spanish invasion of their homeland. He's also been recovering from a virus he picked up while there. I've let my laureate blog lapse, therefore.

I can't speak for this translation. I couldn't find the source. The translation I've had for years is by Nathaniel Tarn. If you go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A1066501 you will find more about Macchu Picchu and Neruda.


(Portion of Inca Trail)

Canto XII from The Heights of Macchu Picchu


Arise to birth with me, my brother.
Give me your hand out of the depths
sown by your sorrows.
You will not return from these stone fastnesses.
You will not emerge from subterranean time.
Your rasping voice will not come back,
nor your pierced eyes rise from their sockets.

Look at me from the depths of the earth,
tiller of fields, weaver, reticent shepherd,
groom of totemic guanacos,
mason high on your treacherous scaffolding,
iceman of Andean tears,
jeweler with crushed fingers,
farmer anxious among his seedlings,
potter wasted among his clays--
bring to the cup of this new life
your ancient buried sorrows.
Show me your blood and your furrow;
say to me: here I was scourged
because a gem was dull or because the earth
failed to give up in time its tithe of corn or stone.
Point out to me the rock on which you stumbled,
the wood they used to crucify your body.
Strike the old flints
to kindle ancient lamps, light up the whips
glued to your wounds throughout the centuries
and light the axes gleaming with your blood.

I come to speak for your dead mouths.

Throughout the earth
let dead lips congregate,
out of the depths spin this long night to me
as if I rode at anchor here with you.

And tell me everything, tell chain by chain,
and link by link, and step by step;
sharpen the knives you kept hidden away,
thrust them into my breast, into my hands,
like a torrent of sunbursts,
an Amazon of buried jaguars,
and leave me cry: hours, days and years,
blind ages, stellar centuries.

And give me silence, give me water, hope.

Give me the struggle, the iron, the volcanoes.

Let bodies cling like magnets to my body.

Come quickly to my veins and to my mouth.

Speak through my speech, and through my blood.

Pablo Neruda