Hidden Door

(For Pablo Neruda, on the helghts of Machu Picchu)

Hidden door dead secret

                     which is Mother

                     Hidden door dead secret

                     which is Father

Hidden door dead secret

                     of our buried life

Hidden door behind which man carries

his footprints along the streets

Hidden door of clay hands knocking

Hidden door without handles

                     whose life is made of knocks by hand and foot

                     Poor hand poor foot poor life !

Hidden door with hair for hinges

Hidden door with lips for latches

Hidden door with skeletons for keys

Hidden door autobiography of humanity

Hidden door dictionary of the universe

Hidden door palimpsest of myself

Hidden door I’m made of

                      with my sticks of limbs

Hidden door pathetic fallacy

                     of the evidence of the senses as to the nature of reality

Hidden door in blind eyes of termites

                      that knock knock

Hidden door blind man with tin cup

                     on a stone corner deaf and dumb

Hidden door train-whistle lost in book of night

Hidden door on night's wheels I blundering follow

                     like a rhinoceros drinking through cities

Hidden door of carrier-pigeons' wings

                      which have half-forgotten

                      their destination

Hidden door plane's wing that skids in space

                     casting stone shadow

                      on sundial of earth

Hidden door f1ying boxcar of history

Hidden door of animaI faces animallaughter animaI dreams

                     and hidden door Cro- Magnon Man

                     among machines

                     and hidden door of his stilI uncollected

                     Collective Unconscious

Hidden door dark forest of America

                     knock knock in North Dakota

Hidden door that wings over America

                     and slants over San Francisco

                     and slams into the Pacific

                     drifting eternally southward

                     to Tierra del Fuego

                     with a knock knock undersea

                     at lost door of Lota coal mines

Hidden door surfboard to lost shore of light

                     and hidden door floated up on tides

                     like a shipwrecked coffinlid

                     bearing blind mouths blind breasts blind thought

                     through the centuries

Hidden door sea-angel cast-lip Albatross

                     spouting seasperm of love in thirty languages

                     and the love-ship of life

                     sunk by the poison-squid of hate

Hidden door dolible-winged sticky-bird plumed serpent

                      stuck to moon afire forever drunk in time

                      flapping loose in eternity

Hidden door of the future mystic life

                      among Magellan's nebulae

                      and hidden door of my mislaid

                      visionary self

Hidden door San Luis rope-bridge which is man

                      hung between nature and spirit

Hidden door of the spirit seen as a fleshy thing

                     and hidden door of eyes and vulvas that still open only with a key

                     of cartilage and flesh

                     and hidden door frozen Inca mummy

                     Prince of the Plomo

                     flicked to death in slin-god sacrifice

Hidden door tin cup of blind brother mutes

                     crouched on a Clizco comer

                     blowing bamboo flutes

                     at coca midnight

Hidden door of the Andes at ten thousand feet

                      in a ragged mist of ruins and red horizons with a seacoast

                      hung below

                      still lost among conquistadors

                      horses dogs and incomprehensible laws

Hidden door wild river of the Urlibamba

                      upon which still floats somewhere

                      the lost herb that separates soul from body

                      and hidden door which is itself that herb

                      and hidden door which is that separation

                      and hidden door made of mirrors

                      on the waters of this river

                      in which I cannot see beyond myself

                      because my body's in the way

Hidden door at last I see through

                     beyond dear body bag of bones

                     which I leave naked on a rock

Hidden door I wigless climb to

                     beyond that river Hidden door at last I fall through in the lost end of day It is dusk

                     by the time we get to

                     Machu Picchu

                     Some Indians go by dancing playing their flutes

                     and beating drums

(Peru-Chile, January-February, 1960)