Ahab of the Andes

A poem based on Aguirre, the Wrath of God.

 

There's a place far away

At the end of the world

Where light gives way to gold,

Pure illusion frosted by the Andes,

Crisp illumination of terraces,

Holy choir beseeching the path,

Emblem of empire crowing the mist,

A stray river of men marching

For the colossus of El Dorado

Laced with jewels upon a cloud forest.

He parts the jungle sea

That leadeth to the Amazon,

Trajectory of vastness, a yearning

Replete with madness, eyes of cobalt,

Blessed by artillery, cursed by betrayal,

Mutiny forging the unreachable dream,

The unredeemable demon

Urging him forth, leaning into the dawn

At the middle of nowhere,

The men starving, the natives conspiring,

Phantom regret leaking into the raft,

Grandiose heart broken by heaven,

Reaching for bliss in the ambient fog.

That destination, he could taste it,

A paradise forgotten, a New World cosmology

Dethroning the old, enthroning the bold,

White stellar milk of manna

Funneling down the mountains

Penetrating his silver armor,

A summons to explore what was never conquered,

There for the taking of anyone but

The strong and the chosen, advanced,

Bleeding savages who thought them friendly,

Burning land that thought them wise,

Only to leave them stranded

In the deepest of Earth's labyrinths.

At the end of this life,

Instead of the golden palaces,

All he could see was the blindness,

The monkeys of chance repealing his doctrines,

Arias of the wilderness casting him out.