La Poderosa Muerte

What was man?
In what part of his open conversation
Between the warehouses and the whistles
In which of his metallic movements
Did the indestructible live
The imperishable
Life?

They all fainted
Waiting for his death
His short daily death
And his daily wretchedness
It was like a black cup they drank trembling

Then on the scale of the stone I climbed
Among the atrocious tangle of lost jungles
To you, Macchu-Picchu
High city of scalar stones
Finally the abode of what is earthly
Did not hide in the sleeping garments
In you, like two parallel lines
The cradle of lightning and man
Rocked in the wind of thorns
Mother of stone, foam of condors
High reef of human dawn

When the clay-colored hand
Turned into clay
And when the little eyelids
Closed
Full of rough walls
Populated with castles
And when all of man
Got tangled in his hole
The exactitude remained hoisted
The high place of human dawn
The highest vessel that contained silence
A life of stone after so many lives