A Poem to Machu Picchu by Pablo Neruda

Poem to Machu Picchu – Poem VI

And then up the ladder of the earth I climbed

through the horrible thicket of the lost jungles

to you, Machu Picchu .

Tall city of stones stacked up in steps,

at last a dwelling where what is earthly

was not hidden under slumbering clothes.

In you, like two parallel lines,

the cradle of lightning and humanity

rocking together in a thorny wind.

Mother of stone, spume of the condors.

Highest reef of the human dawn.

Shovel buried in the first sand.

This is the spot, the place where they lived:

here the fat kernels of corn were carried up

and fell again to earth like red hail.

Here the gold wool came off the vicuna

to dress the loves, the burial mounds, the mothers,

the king, the prayers, the warriors.

Here men’s feet took their rest at night

next to the feet of eagles, in the lofty lairs

of the meat-eaters, and at dawn

they trod with thunderous steps over the rarefied fog,

and touched the ground and the rocks

until they knew them in the dark or in death.

I look at their clothes and their hands,

the traces of water in the echoing hollows,

the wall worn smooth by the touch of a face

that looked with my eyes a the earthly lamps,

that oiled with my hands the vanished

timbers: because everything –the clothes, the hides, the vessels,

the words, the wine, the bread-

was gone, fallen into the earth.

And the air came in with orange-blossom fingers

over all the sleepers:

a thousand years of air, months, weeks of air,

of blue wind and iron mountains,

as if soft hurricanes of running feet

were polishing the solitary enclosure of the stone.