Peruvians

A mummy
Clutching his head
With both hands:
Petrified scream.

Follow the ceques
To the huacas;
Stone smelts
Under your hands.

The granite frieze at Sechín:
Two lines of warrior-priests
Advance from either side of the walls
Towards the steps that rise from its centre
To the top, accompanied by their victims’ bodies,
Decapitated, mutilated, intestines spilling
Out of stomachs, blood pouring from wounds
In thick gouts, the mouths gawping in shock
And terror; and a skullrack stacked high
With trophies; all depicted with exquisite skill
And relish. Were human lives sacrificed
To propitiate the gods of weather?
Well, then, the gods turned against them,
For eventually tremendous deluge
Buried the temple under mud
For thousands of years.

The Pyramids of the Sun and Moon
I ascend,
Bound by the spider;
The sea demands my death,
I am meat and drink
To the god of the fishes.
The bird-men will squeeze my blood into a goblet,
Take my head for a trophy,
Leave the bones to the vultures.

I gaze upon Moche pots,
Playful and grotesque:
Skulls laughing and copulating with humans;
Amputees and poor wretches
With hemiplegia, elephantiasis, leishmaniasis and pox;
A chicha jar in the form of a giant phallus,
Enticing the drinker into fellatio;
Women masturbating men;
Men masturbating themselves;
Male and female bodies locked in sodomy.
A young boy peeps through a hole in a wall
At a couple making love in the next house,
While a dog sleeps outside.
An ithyphallic prisoner kneels, hands tied behind him:
The club strikes his head
And a priest slits his throat,
Cradling the gold in a goblet.

The gaping nostrils and staring eyes
Of the stone jaguars at Chavín,
Shapshifting priests
Drunk on the San Pedro cactus;
With its slow and gorgeous
Ocean of joy,
Shot through with explosions
Of anadenanthera,
Snakebites of horror,
Fire and nausea,
Hunched on the ground, vomiting death,
Growling and fanging the dark
Whence visions come.

At Nasca the people pace the lines
To spell rain from the stars,
And trek to the mountain waters
Sounding its flute in their heads.

On the Island of the Sun,
Lake Titicaca, -
A thousand shades of blue,
Twisters spinning across the waves, -
At the June solstice,
The sun rises between the two towers,
Where Inca nobles stand in adoration.