El Dorado

Unknown Artist’s Conception of El Dorado from pinterest.com

glistening dream
gleaming legend
enveloped by
updrafts of steam
the pained sighs
from a bloodletting
slaughter of jungles

a dream who climbs
warpaths and rituals
into to the mists
of mute mountains
in search of a
shimmering
city of gold

fabled fountainhead
told of in torture
at swordpoint
a keen inquisition
in rapture of vast
inexhaustible wealth
metaphorical grail

the recalcitrant
riddle of gilded
intractable priests
its one stubbornly
undisclosed secret
persistent of
incomplete conquest

there had to be more
there just
had to be more
tenía que haber más
the lamenting refrain
carried northward
and southward

across tribal
deserts of stone
for a distance
of five hundred years
while in cloudbanks
that cling
above treelines

to unmapped
untrodden
invisible peaks
sprawls a city
so golden
it shines like
the heart of the sun