At the Kansas Color Press where <br />we, the bag boys slung the heavy <br />sacks full of magazines onto trucks, <br />I worked with another young man <br />from Peru-I remember his voice <br />anxiously mining old stories <br />further down from far places, <br />from family, with copper light shining. <br /> <br />After the Ancash earthquake <br />my friend went home, I supposed, <br />to search for the living and dead, <br />an avalanche of lost names and faces <br />infusing a voice which still carries <br />frayed pockets full of ancient unfoldings, <br />further down from gray surfaces, <br />from names, cities and their dying. <br /> <br />They climb out of the rubble and grit <br />lining broken shafts of memories, <br />a ragged stumble of thoughts, an homage <br />scours the scattered remains and shrines <br />of cemeteries that once were towns <br />huddled under western Andean stars, <br />further down, far from Kansas, <br />from punch clocks, factories, the living. <br /> <br />Further down this valley <br />roam channels emptying <br />into this mountain road, <br />wandering further <br />where my heart walks <br />reckoning toward <br />a country I barely make, <br />lit by a voice of copper light.<br /><br />Phillip Michael Sawatzky<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/1970-and-further/
