PACHAKUTI

VOL. 1
august 2023
MAGAZINE OF POETRY IN TRANSLATION

IN ITS FLAMING EYES,

IT CARRIES LOVE
Peruvian Poetry
Translated into English
 in solidarity
with the NSFAS students of south africa

All types of reproduction of these poems are allowed

ilustration by:
shila alvarado
@limenagirl
SELECTION BY:
jORGE ALEJANDRO CCOYLLURPUMA
@errante.andino
AND
pIETER ODENDAAL
@pieterjlodendaal
DOWNLOAD this magazine for free at:
www.PUMAPOETA.PE
www.chiriuchutxt.com
 us
popular aymara poetry

Who walks in the cold? I do

Who shakes the leaves? you do
Who stirs up the soil? I do
Who sings in the tree? you
Who suffers more than anyone? I do
Who chases the clouds? you do
Who gathers the rivers’ waters? I do
Who cries in the wind? you
Who are you and I? the wind.

Extracts of quechua popular songs collected in Ayacucho, Cusco y Apurímac by José María
Arguedas, and published in Poesía popular de la costa, sierra y selva del Perú (1992) by
Alejandro Romualdo.

Translated by Paloma Cáceres Urban (Argentina)

1
 I raise a golden-winged
Ipopular
raise a fly
quechua poetry
fly
I raise a flaming-eyed
fly.

It brings death
in its flaming eyes,
it brings death
in its golden hairs,
in its beautiful wings. Nocturnal insect
death-delivery fly
Inside a ginger ale bottle inside of a green bottle
I raise it, I raise it
and no one knows and love it so.
if it drinks
and no one knows
if it eats. But, sure!
sure!
It wanders at night nobody knows
like a star, if I water it
it hurts mortally if I feed it.
with its red shine,
with its flaming eyes.

In its flaming eyes

it carries love,
at night its blood
and the love it carries in its heart
gleam.

Translated by Paloma Cáceres Urban (Argentina)

2
 untitled
CESAR vallejo
(La libertad, 1892-1938)

For several days, I have felt an exuberant, political need

to love, to kiss affection on its two cheeks,
and I have felt from afar a demonstrative
desire, another desire to love, willingly or by force,
whoever hates me, whoever rips up his paper, a little boy,
the woman who cries for the man who was crying,
the king of wine, the slave of water,
whoever hid in his wrath,
whoever sweats, whoever passes, whoever shakes his person in my soul.
And I want, therefore, to adjust
the braid of whoever talks to me; the hair of the soldier;
the light of the great one; the greatness of the little one.
I want to iron directly
a handkerchief for whoever is unable to cry
and, when I am sad or happiness hurts me,
to mend the children and the geniuses.
I want to help the good one become a little bit bad
and I badly need to be seated
on the right hand of the left-handed, and to respond to the mute,
trying to be useful to him
as I can, and also I want very much
to wash the lame man’s foot,
and to help the nearby one-eyed man sleep.

3
 Ah love, this one my own, this one the world’s,
interhuman and parochial, maturely aged!
It comes perfectly timed,
from the foundation, from the public groin,
and, coming from afar, makes me want to kiss
the singer’s muffler,
and whoever suffers, to kiss him on his frying pan,
the deaf man on his cranial murmur;
whoever gives me what I forgot in my breast,
on his Dante, on his Chaplin, on his shoulders.
I want, finally,
when I’m at the celebrated edge of violence
or my heart full of chest, I would like
to help whoever smiles to laugh,
to put a little bird right on the evil man’s cape,
to take care of the sick, annoying them,
to buy from the vendor
to help the killer kill, a terrible thing
and I would like to be kind to myself
in everything.

Translated by Jose Rubia Barcia (Spain), Clayton Eshleman (USA)

4
 antonio
CESAR MORO (LIMA, 1903-1956)
ANTONIO is God
ANTONIO is the Sun
ANTONIO can destroy the world in a second
ANTONIO makes the rain fall
ANTONIO can darken the day or brighten the night
ANTONIO is the origin of the Milky Way
ANTONIO has feet of constellations
ANTONIO has breath of shooting stars and dark nights
ANTONIO is the generic name of celestial bodies
ANTONIO is a carnivorous plant with diamond eyes
ANTONIO can create continents if he spits in the sea
ANTONIO puts the world to sleep when he closes his eyes
ANTONIO is a transparent mountain
ANTONIO is the falling of the leaves and the birth of day
ANTONIO is the name written with fiery letters on all the planets
ANTONIO is the Great Flood
ANTONIO is the megalithic age of the World
ANTONIO is the internal fire of the Earth
ANTONIO is the heart of an unknown mineral
ANTONIO fertilizes the stars
ANTONIO is the Pharaoh the Emperor the Inca
ANTONIO is born of the night
ANTONIO is revered by the stars
ANTONIO is more beautiful than the colossi of Memnon in Thebes
ANTONIO is seven times bigger than the Colossus of Rhodes
ANTONIO occupies the whole history of the world
ANTONIO surpasses in majesty the grandiose spectacle of the enraged sea
ANTONIO is the entire Ptolemaic Dynasty
Mexico grows around ANTONIO

Translated by Jorge Alejandro Ccoyllurpuma (Peru)

5
 letter III
CESAR MORO (LIMA, 1903-1956)
I love you with your great cruelty, because you appear in the middle
of my dream and you wake me up and like a god, like an authentic
god, like the only and true, with the injustice of the gods, all black
nocturnal god, all of obsidian with your head of diamond, like a wild
colt, with your wild hands and your feet of gold that support your
black body, you drag me and throw me into the sea of tortures and
suppositions.

Nothing exists outside of you, only silence and space. But you are the
space and the night, the air and the water that I drink, the silent
poison and the volcano into whose abyss I fell long ago, centuries
ago, before I was born, so that you might drag me by my hair to my
death. Vainly I struggle, vainly I ask. The gods are mute; like a wall
that moves away, that is how you respond to my questions, to the
burning thirst of my life.

Why resist your power? Why fight your lightning strength, against
your torrential arms; if it has to be like this, if you are the point, the
pole that magnetizes my life. Your story is the story of man. The
great drama in which my existence is the burning bush, the object of
your cosmic vengeance, of your rancor of steel. All sex and all ire,
this you are. All ice and all shade, this you are. Beautiful demon of
the night, implacable tiger of starry testicles, grand black tiger of
endless semen clouds flooding the world.

Keep me next to you, near your navel where the air begins; near your
armpits where the air runs out. Near your feet and near your hands.
Keep me next to you.

6
 I will be your shade and the water for your thirst, with eyes;
in your dream I will be that luminous point that grows larger
and turns everything into light; in your bed as you sleep you
will hear something like a murmur and a warmth will wind
around your feet and rising will slowly take over your limbs
and a great relief will take hold of your body and when you
extend your hand you will feel a strange body, icy: it will be
me. You carry me in your blood and in your breath, nothing
will be able to erase me. Your strength is useless to scare me
away, your anger is weaker than my love; you and I already
united forever, in spite of you, we go together. In the
pleasure that you take far from me there is a sob and your
name. Before your eyes, the inextinguishable fire.

June 18, 1939

Translated by Rafa Ramírez (Peru)

7
 new york
CARLOS OQUENDO DE AMAT
(Puno, 1905-1936)
Translated by Alejandro de Acosta and Joshua Beckman (USA)
8
 cactus
KILLKU WARAK’A
(Cusco, 1909-1984)

Now I know
I am a cactus that hurts everyone
there is no love or tenderness for me
as there is no water for the cactus

Upon my body
the black spiders
will never spin their webs
everything I do makes people angry
even my breath stinks to them

A lone cactus rooted in the rocks

that nobody cares about
when it’s cold or when it hails
but being a cactus anyhow
I can still bloom and brighten up this world
a little.

Translated by Jorge Alejandro Ccoyllurpuma (Peru)

9
 you are like a tree
maria emilia cornejo
(Lima, 1949-1972)

you are like a tree

that gives shade
that protects.
the winds have fun
in you
and your hair like leaves
always gives
rest to the breeze
and you are eucalyptus
fragrant
placid
and
this is how I love you,
fragrant,
placid,
eucalyptus

Translated by Pieter Odendaal (South Africa)

10
 ThE bad girl in the story
maria emilia cornejo
(Lima, 1949-1972)

I am
the bad girl in the story
who fucked three men
and cheated on her husband,

I am the woman
who deceived him every day
for a miserable plate of lentils,
who slowly undressed his kindness

and turned him into rock,

black and infertile,
I am the woman who castrated him
with infinite gestures of tenderness
and fake moans in bed

I am
the bad girl in the story

Translated by Pieter Odendaal (South Africa)

11
 timid and shy
maria emilia cornejo
(Lima, 1949-1972)

timid and shy

I let you slowly undress me,
naked
unknowing and freezing to death
I put myself between your legs
is this your first time?
you asked,
I could only cry.
I heard you tell me that everything would be fine
that I shouldn’t worry,
I remembered my parents’ long discussions
my mother’s desperate crying
and her voice telling me:
“never trust a man”.

you understood my pain

and with infinite tenderness
you covered
my body with your body,
you have to open your legs, you murmured
and I felt clumsy and desolate.

Translated by Pieter Odendaal (South Africa)

12
 I pretend to be asleep
Giovanna Pollarolo
(tacna, 1952)
each night
I pray that he is late
and doesn't touch me
for years I've hated his smell, the ends of his moustache
his gasps
the face
the spit, the sweat
I close my eyes until it's over
it only lasts a while, but too long
The only thing I can think of
is the blade of a knife.

Translated by Pieter Odendaal (South Africa)

13
 multicolored buterfly
Ch’aska Eugenia
Anka Ninawaman
(Cusco, 1973)
Multicolored butterfly
The paintings on your wings
are delicate
and untouchable.
My fingers yearned to caress you,
but they erased your artwork.
Oh, multicolored butterfly,
because I touched your wings,
the pages of my book are empty now;
I have nothing left to read.
People will call me foolish.

Translated by Jorge Alejandro Ccoyllurpuma (Peru)

14
 MAMA AFRICA
JORGE ALEJANDRO CCOYLLURPUMA
(Cusco, 1987)
Hatun Ñust’a Mama Africa
Sumaq t’anta mikhuna mast’ariq
Q’umir P’achayuq Mamallay.
Please help me
‘cause I’m about to commit a crime.
I’m about to cut somebody’s head
to dance on their blood.
I don’t like the way they talk to me, Pachamama
I hate the way they stare at me and laugh
I keep on remembering their historical atrocities.
So
I reacted.
I wanted to change them into birds
I wanted to sing “asibe happy, sibemunye” with them
But they can’t listen.
All they do is pray to Jesus with one hand raised
And with the other they torture and make you
disappear.
I hate them so much, Pachamama
in my mind I shot them with purple crystal arrows every
day.
I have forgotten what you have taught me
with your words
of blue-armored birds
and golden goats destroying cars.

15
 In Makhanda I saw restless spirits crowding the hills
they whispered to me:
“Bring food here
the soil is soaked with our blood
crops no longer grow from this land”.
“Oh, fuck you King of Spain
Oh, fuck you Queen of England
Y’all criminals
and you are going to pay dearly for your crimes.
You are not pure.
Your whiteness is a lie I’m sick of
and I refuse to perpetuate your mindset.
In Peru we say: “never eat in front of the hungry”
but you keep on eating in front of starving people
people who are starved because of you
and all your fucking political jokes”.
I was screaming those things at them, Pachamama,
wasted as hell, Pachamama.
What do I do?
Must I commit a crime to make justice?

16
 Calmly
Pachamama replied to me through the waters of Mooi
Rivier and said:
Wawallay, Intiq Churin.
Amaña waqayñachu, wawallay.
Look
modern world now rests
on fragile pillars of smoke.
Be a little more patient.
And when they come to you again
with their madness
don’t try to kill them,
they are already dead,
instead become a pre-historic rock
rejoin the great Andean mountains
and move on.
Don’t worry, wawallay, justice is coming.
The criminals will painfully destroy themselves
Your madness will become calm
and the stolen land will be given back
to the future.

17
 There is an Italian train...
Myra Jara
(Lima, 1987)
There is an Italian train trip that can take you away from
Europe
The train trip ends in Ukraine, in a tunnel
The heads descending into the Ukranian tunnel move slowly
on the platform
Some heads move towards the stairs
The small heads of children move, there are also small heads
of dogs and swans
Other heads wait on the platform for another train
On these still heads rest black flies and insects
Those who embark will cross Siberia, will arrive in Mongolia,
Then, they will depart for small places in Asia.

The train to Mongolia takes 10 or 15 people

Not all the animals get on, some people have had to
abandon their dogs and chickens

The company does not want them all

Sometimes it accepts women without their children
Men without their women

Few come on the train, carrying little

I go to the train every month, they call me to clean it

I throw away the eggshells, the beer, the condoms
When I finish cleaning, I take a deep breath
I spit and
18 I sit
 They call me Lady, those who come to pay me
But I am a young woman
I have chosen the work in the train to be with the cows
To despise
The obscene amount of hunger.

I don’t despise
The hunger, the thirst of the people increasing with an
idea of isolation. One that will make you act in subtle
ways against yourself, in Asia.
So it grows, that is how the world grows old.

I clean Mongolia
I am smoking with a broom down their barbaric streets
Their inhabitants are all like cold bees
But the women are as good as larvae, swollen, savage,
and needle working

I clean Mongolia and I go traveling

When I arrive I have sex
With men at the bar
They go, but before they do, they wash my neck.

On the train, the workers wash my neck

I am telling them about my hunger
The pleasure of the misery before the hunger.
Is necessary to cause misery
And I remember them as we bathe together, all naked:
Such a long way to grow old.

Translated by Dana Killmeyer (USA)

19
 Red motherland
David Orlando
del Águila Quevedo
(San Martín, 1988)
In a low voice, a voice that sounds like being at the bottom of
the ocean, Mom tells me not to worry, that floating in the
warm plasma of her uterus I am safe from my country. I don’t
even know if I’m a human or an elephant. I am proportioned
in such a way that I might as well be from another planet. I’m
not a person. I don’t breathe through my nose or chew with
teeth. Poetry has told me, now years later, with a little bit of
fear and a little shame and horror, that what I was then was a
satellite in the space between my mother’s guts, while outside
in the noise, the endless and truly human carnival, the thinking
meat, there was only a staticky sizzling sound. In San
Gerónimo Square, Mom saw a dead body without a head.
Mom saw the saint holding someone else’s face. She said that
I gave her a good kick in the belly then. My world. Bubbles
came out of my mouth, my first scream. This is something
poetry has taught me. Me, packed in thin sheets of
polystyrene foam, like a Chinese vase, beautiful from every
angle, but bizarre, without any calling in the universe, except
to be and exist. Outside, the war, yes, this goddamn war which
everyone, everyone, everyone talks about in those books that
stretch out like snakes in the collective memory.

Translated by Nathaniel Kennon Perkins (USA)

20
 My name is sweat
ANTONIO CHUMBILE
(Chinchaysuyu, 1990)
...first of All
father family mother miss young student
I apologize for infecting your nice ride
but I can’t hold it
I can’t anymore
this town this bleeding
howls from I don’t know where in me
it hardens my kidney it rottens me
and I stand in front of you like an avalanche
with this throat rasping the air
with all the dust I’ve swallowed getting outta my mother's womb
with this humble, honest poem
to ask for a stick for a crutch
a morning that doesn’t gut my eyes
a strong armed word of encouragement
and most of all something for my kids ladies and gentlemen
I had six as I recall
one is dead
the other one was killed
and you wouldn’t wanna know about the rest
now there’re three and one more coming
crushed by the same mat over the same sand trap
that has a saint’s name to see if god
turns around more often
that blesses himself, confesses to himself
tips himself
21
 .
to see if the sky stops being a back
to see if this rust releases my faith and my knee
leave that window of yours my friend but don’t ignore me
I don’t come in here with empty words
right here in this bag I bring more stories
covered with chocolate almonds and my rabid thirst
to talk to you about something
something that threatens our backs
gasping naked and home
empty and thin
I call it Sweat
everyone else, poverty
and it pulls you from your feet
it tells you that’s it for you say goodbye to your voice
walk crooked wear anemic eyes
and go run fly and run away in that toyota coaster
get a hold of yourself castaway
look to your frontless front and tell
that you're an ex convict if you dare
tell them that you don’t have a father or a mother if you're
skinny
tell them that you have half a lung, half a pancreas
tell them that you have all the AIDS they can imagine
or tell them that you have two or three kids like I do
because nobody is going to believe that you have eight nine ten
you’ve got to say a piece of bread for your home
even if you don’t know what bread is
even if you don’t have a kitchen table or house at all
don’t tell them it is candy saving your day no
tell them these are rich sweetened products with lemon flavor
Peruvian made
in an Emergency factory here an Emergency
22
 .
because I also come from the Beyond that hurts
I come from Ancash Loreto Cajamarca Piura Cuzco
I’m from Puno Amazonas Pasco Andahuaylas
I’m from Ayacucho
I want something for a smile and for a ticket
my granite skin and facing suffocation
because everyone bites in Lima
everything bites
look no further than through your own window passenger
look the hunger to your side as i’m not lying
remember how many times you chose to be that bottle
crushed wheel after wheel with no reason
or that black plastic bag that flies and flies with the wind
through the court and the sleep with no pain at all
whatever that is my friend whatever that is
but something that has to get up innocently in the morning
mornings where everything stinks
everything is born from the Big Fly
mornings when you are beat and say no
please not me not me anymore
and you get opened from the belly button anyways
your bowels are rolled up to a mallet
and off to this sidewalk to this fence
to these extra hours on your buttocks
off to this reality on your back
mornings where god doesn’t give you a hat but a coffin
mornings that you get pushed and abused some more

23
 .
you get crossed by children grandchildren of grandchildren
friends in-laws godmothers that don’t give blessings
and with all of them you move with no complaint no screaming
or you’ll be dragged through this damn slaughter of gunpowder
with no coast no it’s all gonna be alright because nobody gets out of
here
and because nobody has sweat bought for himself young lady young
student
i say it again, this is a humble and honest poem
old and sharp
of dirt and phlegm
blue-collared
to get the hymn of my bones to you
I don’t have anything but my dead body
but my soul is not on it’s hands and knees
I’m this arm scratching on this tin chest
this calloused hand scaring the mosquitoes away from my children’s
hearts
we are the plague and the landscape
we are country guys we get up really early in the morning
to go to work with our brothers to get chunks of oxygen
from this abyss of a sky
and I’m like you just a man
a passenger in this hunger with no whereabouts
and this card whining I’m deaf I’m mute I’m blind
I’m Peruvian
because I have half of my mother at Dos de mayo Hospital
I have my father at Lurigancho jail only covered with a spoon
eating bars that don’t dance
and my sister earning her beans at night
wearing heels that she hates so much
with men I’m not suppose to look at
daddy said it’s a grown up thing
mom didn’t say anything at all… Translated by Nicolás Pili (Argentina)
24
 Sometimes I remember...
J. Estiven Medina Ortiz
(Apurímac, 1995)

Sometimes I remember the poem M taught me, many years ago,

when I was a kid that used to lie on the grass, stare at the sky and
ask himself why the hell the sky was blue. The poem went like this:

“If an arm falls off my body

Keep it.
Never give it back to me.
Another one will grow,
Like a plant
And it will be leafy
And it will reach the sun
And god will show his head
And, believing that it’s a flower,
He will smell it
And it will be my hand
That he smells.
And it won’t smell good”.

A friend who lost his right arm taught me this poem. He was the
best poet I’ve ever met in my short life and the only poet I wanted
to know. Poets scare me and I don’t know why. Maybe because
they’re always up to something strange. But this one I loved and his
absent arm didn’t scare me. It was the only poem I remember of the
many he recited solemnly, perhaps because it was a poem to his
arm.
25
 I never asked him what happened to him, because I feared losing
his friendship or finding out something sinister.

One time I had a dream where I asked him about his arm and he
answered me that when he was very little his family was very poor
and he had nothing to eat so his dad took an axe and sliced his
arm for lunch, while consoling him and telling him another arm
would grow, more beautiful.

So obsessed was I with the subject of his arm that I dreamt the
same thing several times. The last time, it was me the one holding
the axe.

His name was M, a beautiful name, but not as much as him. I don’t
remember how I met him, it must have been memorable but, as I
said before, memory is what I lack. Perhaps I’m insane. I would like
to believe that I met him when he still had the arm and then
suddenly, one day, he just showed up without it. That would be
funny, right? And I would never ask him about the subject, mostly
because of fear. Kids like me are fearful. Sometimes they’re even
scared of breathing. I see him arriving without his little arm, nearly
indistinguishable under his long sleeve shirt that hangs from one
side. His defiant eyes avoiding any possible curiosity, it still hurts,
you can tell from his tiny gestures. Pain drawing a couple of lines
between his eyebrows. His mouth crying in silence trying to pull
itself out from his face. That heart spreading blood through the
whole body except for the arm. Now, that I am a little bit braver I
would not doubt to ask him. And if he told me his hungry father
was the one who chopped it and lied to him telling him another arm
would grow, more beautiful. I would do the impossible to convince
him to do the same thing to his father. Cutting his arm off and
placing it on him so he never has any problems, or even feels bad.

26 Translated by Tania Panés (Spain)

 VI
Alejandra Machuca
(Piura, 1993)

when the house is silent we remain still so as not to break the tiles
an old death’s rumor embraces us and tells us to be quiet
and we are

if we laugh we laugh in silence

and if we want to be hugged
we stare at the window

when the house is silent we don’t crack any bones

we bite no bread
we don’t even have a sip of water

we remain still
so as not to wake the house

Translated by Nicolás Pili (Argentina)

27
 General Culture
Valeria Román Marroquín
(Arequipa, 1999)

in art class we see videos about dead, insane or poor artists,

that is to say, a long etcetera that includes the immense
ensemble of what we can call general culture
nobody cares too much,
on our drawing blocs we make sad faces or extremely
deformed hearts, massive penises; everybody thinks those are
common things drawn by common guys
but when I look to those paintings I feel my stomach burning
a little bit:
i remember we once fucked in the living room but I don’t know
in which house it happened,
i lived in magdalena / breña / san borja / san miguel / lince
and a long etcetera that includes the group of districts where
people have seen me losing my head along with my keys
thousands of times
houses where the small compartment that is / was / will be my
room does not have curtains
rooms in which i squirm with rage, and where i am never
completely alone to sneez in peace / walk naked / cry / do
things that independent people do
i have no interest in someone caring about me who wants to
say cheers / bless you / clean your nose

28
 we fucked in the living room, that’s the point
we fucked
you put me backwards
like every tuesday
i remained silent
i realized how much i hated you and how boring you were,
as boring as staring at a white wall while being penetrated
doesn't emptiness bring you terrible memories? because
perspectives usually feel very gross and violent to me
like muted porn or the epilepsy my family expects me to inherit

i am pretty sure i’ll move very soon:

my mother and my brother are two children in this house, they will
get rid of the pictures, the furniture, the windows
like every year; i’ll have to do exactly the same afterwards
if we think about it, maybe that general culture can turn out to be
useful: i will hang a matisse or a dufy in the room
but if it doesn’t look good
if my taste for choosing paintings to look at while being
penetrated is appalling,
you can come to the living room, which is very much the same as
other living rooms you must already know,
we can fuck
and carefully study these normal guys with great interest

i know very well that even though i remember every gross and
violent thing we once did to each other
i‘ll remember the beautiful things i learned during this time,
like making replicas of picasso, da vinci or magritte with crayons
like being a dark and meek animal on top of what we paint on our
lucid bellies
extensive
conjugated animals
tied to a wall
Translated by Tania Panés (Spain)
29
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