‘Viracocha’: A Poem on the Incan Sun God by Daniel Pugh

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Viracocha

Viracocha made the world,
__He made it in a day.
A day in Viracocha’s life
__Would leave you old and gray,
So when he’d finished making it
__He must sit down and play.

Viracocha made the world,
__He made it in a minute.
He was so pleased with what he’d made
__He must put people in it:
He made a web of many knots
__As fine as he could spin it.

The knots of Viracocha’s web
__Are the souls of men.
The strands that bind them each to each
__Are love and friendship then,
And where the web is tangled
__That is Viracocha’s sin.

Viracocha made the world,
__He made it in a year,
And wanting all his world to dance
__He threw the summer spear.
The dance began: the birth, the love,
__The death, the hope, the fear.

Viracocha made the world
__And he sustains it still.
He changes it each moment
__To better suit his will.
Time out of mind he’s labored
__And the web is tangled still.

But Viracocha keeps on at it,
__Does his best each day:
Weaves our future for us
__And pulls the past away,
Yet how men fear the flight of time
__And cling to yesterday.

So Viracocha shrugs
__And then goes up into his tower.
He doesn’t sleep at night,
__He gazes hour after hour
On the world that he has made
__And then begins the shower

Of Viracocha’s tears of pity,
__Tears that drop till dawn,
When he comes down to gather them
__As dew from off his lawn
And spins them into webbing
__That our world may still go on.

The summer spear (the flight of time,
__The shuttle of his loom)
Strikes into Viracocha’s heart
__And there is always room
At close of year for one more spear:
__That’s Viracocha’s doom.

His heart keeps swelling full of pain,
__Its growth will never cease.
His eyes behold the world he’s made,
__His tears will find release:
If his compassion ever failed
__This whole wide world would cease.

Though Viracocha made the world
__He did not make it well.
And though he tries his hardest
__There are limits to his skill,
But I will own no limit
__To his bountiful good will.

And I love Viracocha’s world
__In spite of all its flaws.
I love the people of this world
__Who hurt without good cause,
And Viracocha’s web of tears
__That binds like nature’s laws.

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Poet’s Note: The Mythologist Joseph Campbell described a pre-Inca Peruvian sun god named Viracocha. In the tropics near the coast there is a thunderstorm in mid-day every day. One of the attributes of Viracocha was that in his daily trip across the sky he beheld the misery of mankind and it always made him cry. The daily rain, on which all life depended, was believed to be his tears. When the Incas conquered Peru they kept him in their pantheon and they promoted him to being their creator-god.

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Daniel Pugh MD, born in 1938, was an enthusiastic amateur folk-singer in the 50s and 60s, and is now retired from 50 years of practicing psychiatry. 

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