INCA

(The mummified body of ‘Juanita’ was discovered on Mount Ampato on 8 September 1995)

They left at dawn as soon as the rising sun
looked them in the eye. They pressed their hands
together at the wrists with fingers spread
to catch and hold their god’s blazing gold
to fire their blood, then climbed to the place of the dead
at the top of their mountain skied above the lands
from which their dwindling crops were hardly won.

At noon they slowed: the air was now so thin
their lungs ached with the effort of rasping it in
and nobody had breath enough for speech.
On a ledge of rock at the limit of their reach
the priest bouldered the ritual blow to send
the girl to their god, leaving for ever all
those she had loved before they conspired her end.
Wrapped in a soft sun-shot alpaca shawl
stained by the blood that burst from her battered head
she lay curled on the frozen stones, ignored
by the aloof sun whom the villagers adored,
who was deaf to prayers for rain. Their sacrifice,
rejected by the sun, was claimed instead
by the mountain god who sealed her away in ice.

Centuries later volcanic rumblings won
her, tumbled her out of the snows to the barren lands.
Forensic scientists examine the dead
girl. They hold, more precious than Inca gold,
the question-mark curves of her knee-hugging fingers; they spread
in the light her still bright shawl with reverent hands.
They mourn an ice-child who lived and died for the sun.

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