Musing On Past Peru Poem by Ananta Madhavan

‘For Forms of Government let fools contest;
Whatever is best administered is best'. Alexander Pope.


As a student I grew interested in how others live,
I understood that others have their varied ways;
Even in a family, a home, happy after a fashion,
Different hopes, different disappointments.
The context may be almost identical,
But the experiencer is someone else.

To note the context of a person, alive or long dead,
One needs a sense of history, a head for details,
How did they spend their days, what games, what food?
Who gave them clothes, who told them how to do
The duties that were thrust on them by custom,
By elders or teachers or social norms and good manners?

I became a reader, interpreting for myself or with the aid
Of books, gurus and lexicons, entering the maze
Of knowledge in fragments and legends, trusting memory
To remember or erase by overload or amnesia
Much that would have made me less ignorant.

So it was that on a day, waiting between two lectures,
Browsing a learned journal in the college library,
I came upon a hint of Incas long ago. William Prescott, in 1848
Had written a racy history, ‘The Conquest of Peru'.
He had described the ancient fortress of Cuzco, how
Some seven centuries before, huge rocks were quarried
And carried up the lofty Andes Mountain for many miles,
Across ravines and rivers. Massive blocks of stones, three feet
By two feet, had been adjusted so accurately that
Not a thin blade could be inserted between them.
Perhaps twenty thousand workers toiled fifty years
To build that fortress. For forms of despotic tyranny
We need no contest. History is erasable by oblivion,
But I liked to know how they lived - rulers, chieftains, slaves and kids.

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