Cusco

Deakin researcher Maria Takolander has had one of her poems published in the prestigious literary magazine, Eureka Street.

Cusco

Old women sleep on footpaths next to cauldrons of boiling corn, the cobs with kernels as big and pale as teeth. They walk the hard roads with bundles of cans or sticks on their backs like humps for lorries, oblivious to the ubiquitous mountains. Children in hand and lambs on frayed ropes, they offer themselves for photographs with their poppy-mouthed skirts and disease-reddened cheeks.

The street walls and foundation stones, born of an age of earthquakes and labyrinths, do not want for mortar or miracles; they have the science of the circling stars and the conquistadors' gods on side. In the church, Black Jesus, bathed in petals and candle smoke, grows smoother and darker each year, and the Blessed Virgin stands mountainous in a triangular dress, her spiked halo the Andean sun.

'Capitalism is misery and suffering,' laments the white paint on the wall of an adobe house, outside which a family with oxen and plough work the blood-soaked earth of the mountains that spewed up so much resilient and spectacular rock. They are watched by dogs, black and bald as pigs. Returning from the markets, busloads of tourists, clad like cheer squads for Peru, take blurred photographs of the passing view.

The air congeals in our lungs. In a restaurant, a woman passes out after vomiting her steak in a side-dish. Her blonde Canadian friend offers it to the quiet waitress, asking for ketchup for her fries. Guinea pig is served here as at the last supper re-painted for the local church half-a-millennium ago, when Judas wore a brown face with a melancholy and knowing gaze. Back at our quake-proof hotel, we are swallowed by our tomb-like room.

–Maria Takolander

For further information on Maria Takolander and her research:
http://www.deakin.edu.au/arts-ed/scca/staff-directory2.php?username=mariat

For more information on Eureka Street:
Eurekastreet.com.au

> BACK