Dead Cities

Out of it all but this remains: I was with one who crossed wide chains Of the Cordilleras, whose peaks Lock in the wilds of Yucatan, Chiapas and Honduras. Weeks And then a city that no man Had ever seen; so dim and old, No chronicle has ever told The history of men who piled Its temples and huge teocallis Among mimosa-blooming valleys; Or how its altars were defiled With human blood; whose idols there With eyes of stone still stand and stare. So old the moon can only know How old, since ancient forests grow On mighty wall and pyramid. Huge ceïbas, whose trunks were scarred With ages, and dense yuccas, hid Fanes 'mid the cacti, scarlet-starred. I looked upon its paven ways, And saw it in its kingliest days; When from the lordly palace one, A victim, walked with prince and priest, Who turned brown faces toward the east In worship of the rising sun: At night ten hundred temples' spires On gold burnt everlasting fires. Uxmal? Palenque? or Copan? I know not. Only how no man Had ever seen; and still my soul Believes it vaster than the three. Volcanic rock walled in the whole, Lost in the woods as in some sea. I only read its hieroglyphs, Perused its monster monoliths Of death, gigantic heads; and read The pictured codex of its fate, The perished Toltec; while in hate Mad monkeys cursed me, as if dead Priests of its past had taken form To guard its ruined shrines from harm.