Machu Picchu
From a random poster in someone’s back kitchen
I was struck down, bowled over,
peremptorily summoned.
To, amid other things, find myself
shimmying up the rock face
by dint of push and pull
“don’t look down!”
delivered perfunctorily onto the ledge of the sun-gate platform
as a newborn onto its mother’s belly.
There, through prismatic rainbows,
far below, this poster peak rose up
from the real-time girdle of the silver Urubamba:
A phallic cone, rooted, erect,
pointing like a rocket to the sky
and it’s starry origins,
surrounded by ragged mountains,
range upon bluey range, evanescing into ineffable distances.
Negotiating a plank and rope path
slung above an abyss, lurching slightly, along the cliff-face
(better not look down!..)
down and down, knees-a-jel,
until, at eye-level with the tip of sacred Putacussi
I stepped out on grassy terra firma,
albeit mind-dazzled, body-zapped
light-headed as any Inca god.
Upright, goggling speechless
until, indeed, it was time to fall down
flat on my face in the mud
no more that a few strides from
a hostel and an actual bed!
From 2005
Oct