From the explosion to the iron split,from the crevice to the road,from the quake to the fire,to the turning, to the river,that heart of sky-water, heart of goldstayed stilland each vein of jasper or sulfurwas a rush, was a wing,was…
Rise to be born with me, brother. Give me your hand out of the deep region seeded by all your grief. You won’t come back from bottom rock. You won’t come back from time under ground. No coming back with…
Through the dazing splendor, through the night of stone, let me plunge my hand and let there beat in me, like a bird a thousand years imprisoned, the old forgotten human heart! Let me forget today this joy this is…
Stone upon stone, and man, where was he? Air upon air, and man, where was he? Time upon time, and man, where was he? Were you too then the broken bit of half-spent humankind, an empty eagle, that through the…
Sidereal eagle, vineyard of mist. Bulwark lost, blind scimitar. Starred belt, sacred bread. Torrential ladder, giant eyelid. Triangled tunic, pollen of stone. Granite lamp, bread of stone. Mineral serpent, rose of stone. Buried ship, wellspring of stone. Lunar horse, light…
Climb up with me, American love. Kiss the secret stones with me. The torrential silver of the Urubamba sends pollen flying to its yellow cup. The empty vine goes flying, the stony plant, the stiff garland over the silent mountain…
You dead of single abyss, shadows of one ravine, the deepest, thus on a scale with your greatness there came the true, the most consuming death and from the drilled-out rocks, from the red-topped columns, from the laddered aqueducts you…
Then on the ladder of the earth I climbed through the lost jungle’s tortured thicket up to you, Macchu Picchu. High city of laddered stones, at last the dwelling of what earth never covered in vestments of sleep. In you…
Solemn death it was not you, iron-plumed bird, that the poor successor to those dwellings carried among gulps of food, under his empty skin: something it was, a spent petal of worn-out tope, a shred of heart that fell short…
The mightiest death invited me many times: like invisible salt in the waves it was, and what its invisible savor disseminated was half like sinking and half like height or huge structures of wind and glacier. I came to the…
