May Death Unite All

"The Heights of Macchu Picchu, III", translated by James Wright, suggests that disease and death obtain their power not in the people or lives they eliminate, but in their ability to make all individuals equal. As the title of the piece explains, the poem is discussing the the great civilization of the Incas, who built their empire amongst the jagged cliffs of the Andes. More specifically, it recalls an event that may have been what destroyed them: a plague of an unstoppable, uncurable sickness.

Beginning with the comparison of the 'human soul' during an epidemic, to the harvesting and storing of corn (1-2) seems to clarify that the story is being told by an indigenous speaker (rather than by an outsider of the culture). Choosing 'maize' (1) as the crop of harvest also bears significance to the poem. Maize was a plant worshipped by the Incas, the source of all life and substance. So, it seems to be suggesting human souls approach 'cleanliness' during plagues of suffering. As the poem continues, it explains why that is.

These diseases, the poem states, contain the ability to wipe out a population (4-5), causing "not only one death, but many deaths". But it then discusses the insignificance of a death, calling it "a tiny death..a light flicked off in the mud..pierced into each man like a short lance" (5-7). The author is reenforcing the idea of equality. When sickness strikes, each man has an equal chance of dying; each man that contracts disease faces the same fate and each man that dies lays motionless in the same way. Earlier, 'souls' during an epidemic are suggested to be approaching 'godliness' (1-2). Equality is considered morally right, as 'godly' as 'maize'.

People from all walks of life were apparently taken by the plague; from "the captain of the plough" to "the rag-picker of snarled streets" (10-11). Although on the surface level, the poem may seem to be depressing, pained, in tone when it says "everybody lost heart, anxiously waiting for death", but it is actually spoken in a tone of reverence. The people are waiting for sleep and rest, and one can argue that in those finals moments of life, the Incans must have reached a point of acceptance, drinking their bad luck with "shaking hands".