Primo Levi
HUAYNA CAPAC·
Heaven help you, messenger, if you lie to your old sovereign .
There are no ships like the ones you are describing ,
Bigger than my royal palace, driven by the storm.
Those dragons you rave about , bronze-sheathed,
Gleaming, with silver feet, do not exist.
There are no bearded warriors; they're ghosts.
Waking or sleeping, your mind invented them,
Or maybe a god sent them to deceive you .
That often happens in calamitous times
When old certainties lose their outlines,
Virtues are negated, and faith fades.
The red plague doesn't come from them; it was already there .
It's not a portent, not an ill omen.
I shan't listen to you. Gather your servants and depart .
Descend through the valley, rush across the plain,
Thrust your sceptre among your enemy half-brothers ,
Sons of my vigor, Huascar and Atahualpa.
Stop the war that bloodies my kingdom
So the cunning stranger won't profit by it.
He asked for gold? Give him a hundred-weight,
A thousand.
If
hate has split this empire of the Sun ,
The gold will inject hate into the other half of the world,
There where the intruder cradles his monsters .
Give him the Inca gold. It will be the happiest of gifts .
Translated from the Italian
by
Ruth Feldman
Editors Note : "Huayna Capac' is from
The Collected Poems
by Primo Levi , translated
by Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann . Copyright
IC
1988. To be published by Faber
and Faber, Inc. in January 1989. Reprinted with permission .
"Huayna Capac, Inca emperor, died in 1527 , shortly after Francisco Pizarro's first
landing at Tumbes .
It
is said that one of his messengers supped on board the
Spanish ship, and that Huayna Capac, by then a dying man , had had news of the
strangers' arrival.
