Mystical Land
by Guillermo Olivos
I have wounded again with foreign boots
the intimate flesh of your fertile valleys,
and smelled the sensuous presence
of your legendary trees.
Hiding in your natural caves
at the skirt of frigid mountains
I have bathed in your tepid waters,
sharing my nakedness
with the Princess of your inner rivers.
I have sensed the shyness
of young attractive serranas.
I have loved the color of their mantas,
the grace of their hats,
and the flair of their thousand skirts.
I have seen my Indian brothers carrying
a dying Christ in religious procession,
pale resemblance of their ancestral Gods;
feline bodies carved in granite
with ostentatious genitals and frightening faces.
Long before the Incas, Spaniards and mestizos.
I want to be part of you before and after I am gone.
I want to be a river, a condor...a puma.
I want to be one of your powerful eternal mountains
to witness the birth of your rivers from the pelvis
of your lakes, and to melt under the sun
that burns the peasants' back.
Let me be the spark at dusk, in memory
of Huanchaco, my mother's birthland,
and nearby Chan Chan, the adobe city.
Bodyless, fiery and icy soul emerging free
like a playful, vivacious and obstinate light.
Flame custodian of buried phosphorescent
skulls of sacrificed Mochica soldiers,
and the children of their children;
Laredo's peons, machete carriers.
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