for Carolina Pezua

Photographed at the portal
my arm in a negligent gesture on Inca stone 
I see you now through a young lens
focused by an older mind

We felt our way through Machu Picchu,
lay in the meadow
sat in nooks where people were tortured
pondered the obelisk Inca tethered the sun to
a center of the world
marked by a people who really believed the sun 
would leave if they abandoned their ceremonies

I think of us at that high crag
far below, the Urubamba river, muffled by distance,
tumbling almost as quietly as our own blood
that runs so deep within us 
we are the dream it carries
peak-shredded mists
torn filaments
our outer selves

I saw a courage rise within you
as you were drawn beyond my sight
over the edge of the sacred valley
four thousand meters of terraced gardens,
full of weeds for the most part, but precise
channels incised into granite
by people without metal tools
still trickling water to irrigate
the eastern slope of the Andes.

“What the hell are you doing?” 

“I am Inca,” I heard you say.

It made me smile. I had to follow.
You descended the oblong stones
projected as a ladder at the ends of each terrace
without railings so your fanny
hovered over the abyss
you were oblivious of the drop,
thousands of feet,
it seemed to mean nothing to you
a trance-like courage held you
And I behind you, terrified I might end up
carrying your broken body
back to your parents in San Luis
our civilized selves shredding like the rags of mist,
in the eyebrow of the jungle, clear
and obscure in turns 

It became our turn 
to walk the wheel
beyond what we thought we were
everything behind us that had lived and died
leaving white granite
carved out for silver mirrors long since pilfered,
in the Temple of the Moon
reappeared in quartz facets
fracturing moonlight into galaxies 
we used to feed each other songs

Surrounded by work centuries silent,
heavy, imposed work
several thousand meters of terraced
stones fitted without mortar, still so tight 
you can’t fit a pin between them,
forced work of anonymous lives
from tribes conquered by an empire that at least
allowed the wearing of tribal hats, preserving
that modicum of dignity, but nevertheless imposed
work for communal purpose beyond self
leaving an empire’s legacy in stone testifying
to unbelievable labor and vision,
created gardens the length of a mountain range
rising out of a valley, water sparkling
along exquisitely cut channels
now quenching weeds

We were each other’s living link
to someone we’d been, refugees from civilization
who listened to the language of caves,
touched their Pleistocene hides as if placentae, who knows what
together we faced earth again, on the east side
of the Andes, tectonic fangs
streaming clouds like beards of some Asian dragon, 
lifting broad shouldered people whose genetics
armed them with large lungs for the altitude,
who embodied contempt for fear of heights, disdained pain
and whose descendants seemed to simply be waiting out
this curio of civilization

While the deeper, Incan one, 
glows and dims like hot coals,
gets turned again
promising a conflagration could tear loose
at a moment’s notice,
a flag on fire, a furious tongue
born in the earth’s core to culminate
in the cauldron of human dreams
to feed on current air—

We felt it in hillside fires burning outside Cuzco
people drinking all day
fed up, lines for rationed rice around the block
the solés devalued overnight
until a riot broke out, and 16th century
wooden doors, twenty feet high, 
were shut and bolted, thin policemen
with pitiful .38’s scrambled across 
cobblestones to quell the sounds
rising from people invisible
in the darkness, hundreds of fires
like eyes on the hillsides, we inside
drinking cappuccinos, now listening
to feet on streets, yelling,
straps and slings jostling
—we looked to the waiters!
as if they were leaders,
protectors, but at least they were people
who had experienced this before
what will happen now
will happen only now. . .  but it was just
an ember being turned by pain
a fork or two of flame
witnessed by two lovers on the brink
of an ancient world verging on upheaval
their own love resolving into a dream