Poetry

By Lark Beltran

ANDEORAMA

Pre-conquest Peru:

sky indigo-blue,

pantheon; halcyon

mountaintop view

where sunrise's span

rested its fan

on the Inca, to link a

sun god to a man.

 

He stood in the light.

Revered was his might

when rallying valiant

armies to fight.

 

His laws were unbendable,

villains expendable.

Ratified strata

kept subjects dependable.

 

His roads were the best,

and at his behest

the courriers scurried

north south east and west.

 

In temples of stone

he sought the unknown;

to pageant of planets

potatoes were grown.

 

From Spain a small horde

with musket and sword

came seeking and reaping

a golden reward.

 

In Jesus's name,

the scavengers came;

priests in cathedrals

put sun gods to shame.

 

The Inca waas dead.

His culture was bled;

the crucifix to the

chakana* was wed.

 

And those who now wander

in realms of the condor

find blocks of cyclopean

kingdoms to ponder,

 

while legends abound

of wealth to be found,

of history, mystery

hid in the ground ...

 

Post-conquest Peru:

So much is askew!

Could tamer invaders

have salvaged the brew?

 * The square Inca cross, one of their sacred symbols

 

OBRAJILLO

Colonial echoes emanate

from a silence

as if all since 1800

were still in embryo.

Sunset alchemizes

straw roofs to gold,

velvets gray-green

of facing mountains

as Doña Xiomara

sits rainbow-shawled

in her dark doorway

selling white moons of cheese.

 

SICAN

House of the Moon, it translates.

Amid a carpet of gnarled millennial carobs,

tomb-pyramids rise in knobby knolls

belying, in their crudeness, hidden goldworks

wrought for the Lords of Sican.

Breastplate and beaker and funerary mask,

pearl-encrusted, inlaid with emeralds

and spondylus, with Andean opal,

garnish the bones of erstwhile dignitaries-

relics of veneration vanquished, silenced

under sediments of sand and change.

Hawk-wings beat the shimmering air by day;

fox under goddess-moon seeks out his prey.

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Lark Beltran, originally from California, has lived in Peru, along with her Peruvian husband, more than half her life as an ESL teacher.  Over the past several years, a number of her poems have been published in online and print journals.  Archaeology is one of her main interests.