Tríptico Peruano

Sulpayki

Woke from dreams of being lost
in a dark building with a woman
asking questions about
the death of my brother.

Felt a deep pain in my neck.
After breakfast, I chewed a wad
of coca leaves and we took a van
to the valley pueblo of Ollantaytambo.

On the path up the mountain
we encountered a family of deer
gleaning a quinoa field after harvest.
Our guide said they are symbols of luck.

We left to visit ancient salt mines.
The salt mines have been worked for over
3,000 years in essentially the same manner.
Open pits reducing spring water in the sun.

Along the way we stopped at a general store.
The Quechua woman working there
demonstrated a traditional salve made of
Andean mint and rosemary eucalyptus

by rubbing it on my hands so lovingly
and so gently I felt embarrassed.
I bought a jar of the salve and she taught me the
Quechua word for “thank you” which is “sulpayki.”

When we returned to the hotel
I had four documents to review and revise
before I could join my family in the courtyard
where Alicia was painting en plein air.

I rubbed the salve
on my sore neck
and got to work.



Old Peak

On the PeruRail train to Aguas Calientes
a woman’s voice on the intercom continually exhorting us
to experience the “mystical energies” of Machu Picchu.

We were given snack boxes of quinoa chips
Peruvian chocolates and coca candies.
Aguas Calientes a kind of basecamp

for visits to Machu Picchu so we stood
in a line of tourists waiting for a
bus to take us up the mountain.

We were admitted past the gate into Machu Picchu
with the rest of the crowd scheduled for 2pm.
I saw deep canyons and narrow green peaks

rising from the valley mist then
the flat terraces and stone buildings of the site.
It seems impossible these rocks were carried

so far to build what is believed
to be a summer house for Inca royalty.
The Incas had no written language so

no one really knows why it was built
or what purpose it might have served.
They really don’t know.

When it was rediscovered in 1911
it was almost entirely overgrown and
an Inca boy named Pablito lived there.

I was exhausted after our tour and slept
on the bus ride down the mountain.
We checked into our hotel in town.

I took a shower then drank mint tea
and rubbed salve into my sore neck
which had been bothering me for days.

We texted the children in their room
to let them know we would meet for dinner soon.
I was feeling so much better now.



El Señor de Los Milagros

In the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Virgin
I saw Mary as a mountain and Christ
eating guinea pig at the last supper.
Streets of Cusco full of parades.

The Inca built this place and
the Spanish stripped it of gold and silver.
Dry mountain air and smoke from burning fields
hurt my throat and my lips permanently chapped.

Over terraced mountainsides
the condor flies the holy spirit
tracking my life with knotted cords
toward the journey of the serpent.

The puma stalks the earth.
Christ the tiger, Christ the puma.
All of it radiating outward
from the navel of the mother.

After a lunch of:

Aguaymento Soda
Tequeños con Guacamole
Butifarra Sandwich
Torta de Chocolate
and an Americano

I held a baby llama in the street
and repeated softly “good boy, cute boy.”
I bargained a shop owner from $95 to $80
for Christmas ornaments and alpaca wool socks.

Tomorrow my journey through the sky realm
then a six hour layover in the Miami airport.
All my prayers radiating outward from here

an offering of coca leaves placed in a niche
among precision carved boulders.

____
Wallace Barker lives in Austin, Texas. He is the editor of Post-Pop Lit. His new translation of “Romancero Gitano” by Federico García Lorca is available from Farthest Heaven.