Once In Arequipa
I heard mestizo music
violin and guitarron
anda pair of ten string mandolins
music to set your feet
to stamping make you
want to dance
the ancient dances
Inca dances
with a Spanish flair
and there in Arequpa
I tasted the ceviche with aji
the fiery native peppers
an initiation bordering
on religion tried the pisco
but preferred the beer

Named the white city
ciudad blanca
for the old colonial buildings
built with pink-white bricks
that men still quarry
from the slopes of el Misti
Peru's own Fuji-san
just over nineteen thousand
feet show-capped
and still releasing whispy
fumaroles the mountain's
dozing only half asleep
she woke again and roared
not ten years after
I had come and gone
I was on my way to
higher places
Puno on lake Titicaca
and by train along the Vilcanota
north to Machu Picchu
sitting on the train
that took us up from Arequipa
climbing slowly into the high Andes
I strummed the little armadillo
backed charango that my brother
brought me from Bolivia
and sang a song by the
guitarist, poet, singer
Atahualpa Yupanqui
a song of how the mountain stream
calls out and pleads with you
to turn back to the mountains
to the home you've left behind
Tu que puedes, vuelvete
You who can, go back again
I sang softly and the woman
neither old nor young
sitting across from me
began to cry