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# Bolivia's big chill: saltscapes and glaciers
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/article-2026jsp/
- Published: 2004-07-28T23:07:00.000Z
- Updated: 2019-02-14T22:49:36.000Z
- Author: Bec Wingrave
- Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 19:17

Isla de Pescadores, covered with giant cacti, this outcrop floats surreally on the salt flats

**Zhila Mosa’ed**

**Shame**

**Unfamiliar with the blue of the sky,** 
**Unfamiliar with the shining green** 
**of the earth,** 
**Unfamiliar with the history** 
**of man’s covering his body,** 
**I am standing** 
**Inside a circle of ice,** 
**Surrounded by sorrow and anxiety;** 
**And naked, ancient and alone,** 
**I carry on my shoulders** 
**the thousand-year-old burden** 
**of shame,** 
**of coveredness,** 
**of modesty.** 
**O mothers of sleep** 
**Whose bones** 
**Are the ancient hiding place** 
**of the dead instincts,** 
**Look how my bare, ancient roots,** 
**Slowly but with resolution,** 
**Penetrate the ice.**

[***Zhila Mosa’ed***](http://www.artarena.force9.co.uk/zhila.htm?ref=opendemocracy.net) ***was born in Tehran in 1948, and currently lives in Sweden. ‘Shame’ was taken from the book of* Modern Persian Poetry *by Mahmud Kianush.***

Lake of ice

**Samuel Taylor Coleridge**

**The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner (extract)**

**And now the STORM-BLAST came, and he** 
**Was tyrannous and strong:** 
**He struck with his o’ertaking wings,** 
**And chased south along.** 
**With sloping masts and dipping prow,** 
**As who pursued with yell and blow** 
**Still treads the shadow of his foe** 
**And forward bends his head,** 
**The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,** 
**And southward aye we fled.** 
**And now there came both mist and snow,** 
**And it grew wondrous cold:** 
**And ice, mast-high, came floating by,** 
**As green as emerald.** 
**And through the drifts the snowy clifts** 
**Did send a dismal sheen:** 
**Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken —** 
**The ice was all between.** 
**The ice was here, the ice was there,** 
**The ice was all around:** 
**It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,** 
**Like noises in a swound!**

[***Samuel Taylor Coleridge***](http://www.online-literature.com/coleridge/?ref=opendemocracy.net) ***(1772-1834), English lyrical poet, critic, and philosopher.***

The salt lake with its indeterminable distances

***The world’s largest salt flat covers and area of 12,000 sq km and is 3653m high.***

***It was part of a historic lake, Lago Minchin, which covered most of Southwest Bolivia and is now all but dried out; left are a few small lakes and the vast salt pan known as Salar de Uyuni.***

The salt piled high ready for collection

The salt is unloaded before being dried, bagged and sold

**Jaime Saenz**

**Watching the River Flow (for Leonardo Garcia Pabon)**

**When the hour comes I’ll speak with you, watching the river flow, at the river’s edge.** 
**With the profile of your face, with the echo of your voice, parceling out my voice into the depths,** 
**into the great spaces that death’s eye has seen, you will know the hidden word.** 
**Where the wind stills. Where living is finished off and all color is one.** 
**Where water is not touched and where earth is not touched: inside my invisible presence, where you know yourself to be, in the millenary present** 
**– of deeds, of smells and of forms; of animals, of minerals, of plants inside time.** 
**In time, of time. Inside premonition’s root. Inside the seed, inside anguish,** 
**only you will know the hidden word.** 
**The aloneness of the world. The aloneness of man. Man’s reason for being and the world’s** 
**\- the circular solitude of the sphere. Increment and decline;** 
**the closing of the hermetic thing. The hermetic closing of the thing.** 
**The immense, the immeasurable – the incommensurate grave, indivisible and blank.**

***Taken from*** [**Immanent Visitor: Selected Poems of Jaime Saenz**](http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9502.html?ref=opendemocracy.net) ***(2002), translated by*** [***Kent Johnson***](http://www.highland.cc.il.us/news%5Fevents/announcements.asp?newsid=158&ref=opendemocracy.net) ***and*** [***Forrest Gander***](http://www.brown.edu/Departments/English/Writing/people/Forrest/bio.html?ref=opendemocracy.net)***. Jaime Saenz (1921-1986) is*** [***Bolivia’s***](http://www.boliviaweb.com/poetry/saenz.htm?ref=opendemocracy.net) ***leading writer of the 20th century, publishing eleven books of poetry between 1955 and 1984.***

A flamingo taking off, Laguna canapa, Near Salar de Uyuni, Southwest Bolivia

**Elizabeth Bishop**

**The Imaginary Iceberg**

**We’d rather have the iceberg than the ship,** 
**although it meant the end of travel.** 
**Although it stood stock-still like cloudy rock** 
**and all the sea were moving marble.** 
**We’d rather have the iceberg than the ship;** 
**we’d rather own this breathing plain of snow** 
**though the ship’s sails were laid upon the sea** 
**as the snow lies undissolved upon the water.** 
**O solemn, floating field,** 
**are you aware an iceberg takes repose** 
**with you, and when it wakes may pasture on your snows?**

**This is a scene a sailor’d give his eyes for.** 
**The ship’s ignored. The iceberg rises** 
**and sinks again; its glassy pinnacles** 
**correct elliptics in the sky.** 
**This is a scene where he who treads the boards** 
**is artlessly rhetorical. The curtain** 
**is light enough to rise on finest ropes** 
**that airy twists of snow provide.** 
**The wits of these white peaks** 
**spar with the sun. Its weight the iceberg dares** 
**upon a shifting stage and stands and stares.**

**The iceberg cuts its facets from within.** 
**Like jewelry from a grave** 
**it saves itself perpetually and adorns** 
**only itself, perhaps the snows** 
**which so surprise us lying on the sea.** 
**Good-bye, we say, good-bye, the ship steers off** 
**where waves give in to one another’s waves** 
**and clouds run in a warmer sky.** 
**Icebergs behoove the soul** 
**(both being self-made from elements least visible)** 
**to see them so: fleshed, fair, erected indivisible.**

***This poem appears in* North & South*,*** [***Elizabeth Bishop’s***](http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a%5Ff/bishop/about.htm?ref=opendemocracy.net) ***first collection of poetry, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1955.***

Glacier

**Emily Dickinson**

**Reverse cannot befall**

**Reverse cannot befall** 
**That fine Prosperity** 
**Whose Sources are interior –** 
**As soon – Adversity**

**A Diamond – overtake** 
**In far – Bolivian Ground –** 
**Misfortune hath no implement** 
**Could mar it – if it found –**

[***Emily Dickinson***](http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a%5Ff/dickinson/bio.htm?ref=opendemocracy.net) ***was one of the most innovative poets of 19th century America. She wrote over 1700 poems, which were discovered after her death and published posthumously.***

Hotel Playa Blanca, built entirely from salt, right down to the beds, chairs and tables

**Walt Whitman**

**Salut Au Monde (extract)**

**I see the Brazilian vaquero;** 
**I see the Bolivian ascending Mount Sorata;** 
**I see the Wacho crossing the plains – I see the incomparable rider of** 
**horses with his lasso on his arm;** 
**I see over the pampas the pursuit of wild cattle for their hides.**

**I see little and large sea-dots, some inhabited, some uninhabited;** 
**I see two boats with nets, lying off the shore of Paumanok, quite still;** 
**I see ten fishermen waiting – they discover now a thick school of** 
**mossbonkers – they drop the join’d seine-ends in the water,** 
**The boats separate – they diverge and row off, each on its rounding** 
**course to the beach, enclosing the mossbonkers;** 
**The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop ashore,** 
**Some of the fishermen lounge in their boats – others stand negligently** 
**ankle-deep in the water, pois’d on strong legs;** 
**The boats are partly drawn up – the water slaps against them;** 
**On the sand, in heaps and winrows, well out from the water, lie the** 
**green-back’d spotted mossbonkers. I see the regions of snow and ice;** 
**I see the sharp-eyed Samoiede and the Finn;** 
**I see the seal-seeker in his boat, poising his lance;** 
**I see the Siberian on his slight-built sledge, drawn by dogs;** 
**I see the porpoise-hunters – I see the whale-crews of the South** 
**Pacific and the North Atlantic;** 
**I see the cliffs, glaciers, torrents, valleys, of Switzerland – I mark** 
**the long winters, and the isolation.**  

***‘Salut Au Monde’ is from* Leaves of Grass (1855)*.*** [***Walt Whitman***](http://www.whitmanarchive.org/index.html?ref=opendemocracy.net) ***(1819-1892) was an American poet and humanist.***

Windswept rock in the desert, near Salar de Uyuni

**All photographs taken by Bec Wingrave:** [**www.becwingrave.com**](http://www.becwingrave.com/?ref=opendemocracy.net)