At the Kansas Color Press where
we, the bag boys slung the heavy
sacks full of magazines onto trucks,
I worked with another young man
from Peru-I remember his voice
anxiously mining old stories
further down from far places,
from family, with copper light shining.
After the Ancash earthquake
my friend went home, I supposed,
to search for the living and dead,
an avalanche of lost names and faces
infusing a voice which still carries
frayed pockets full of ancient unfoldings,
further down from gray surfaces,
from names, cities and their dying.
They climb out of the rubble and grit
lining broken shafts of memories,
a ragged stumble of thoughts, an homage
scours the scattered remains and shrines
of cemeteries that once were towns
huddled under western Andean stars,
further down, far from Kansas,
from punch clocks, factories, the living.
Further down this valley
roam channels emptying
into this mountain road,
wandering further
where my heart walks
reckoning toward
a country I barely make,
lit by a voice of copper light.
Phillip Michael Sawatzky
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/1970-and-further/
