They come not often now, the ones who bear
The emblems of old enmities and strife.
Now that I am at ease with age, I see,
As in a glass upon a photograph,
Their sad mimicry and reflecting gaze,
Their vague and seldom forms dismembering.
How they strive to assemble, to take shape!
They blur in being, drift in vortices
Of time, and mouth the silence of their names.
19 rue de LILLE
Across the courtyard light ascends
And will ascend to night. Below
Are windows flickering. Time bends
Beyond the solar afterglow.
I hunt the moon, imagine seas
That reach to dawns appearing. Here,
In this dark street, and as I please,
I quest upon the astral sphere.
To Tangle
I would propose,
Puppy Eyes,
That we tangle tonight.
The moon is right
And the air is scented with sweetgrass.
Listen. Do you hear
How my words are tangled
In the notes of my flute?
And I am mute,
And your hair is scented with clover.
I will enfold you
In a robe of sunrise colors,
And we will tangle smoke
In the stars.
A Song of Thanksgiving
Your name is spoken in the camps
We make a song for you
In our song there is honor
In our song there is respect
In our song there is affection
In our song there is thanksgiving
Our words are borne northward
Our words bear you on your quest
Your name is spoken in the camps
We make a dance for you
In our dance there is gladness
In our dance there is laughter
In our dance there is communion
In our dance there is fulfillment
Our words are borne westward
Our words bear you on your quest
Your name is spoken in the camps
We make a prayer for you
In our prayer there is power
In our prayer there is well-being
In our prayer there is humility
In our prayer there is transcendence
Our words are borne southward
Our words bear you on your quest
Your name is spoken in the camps
We make a vision for you
In our vision there is wonder
In our vision there is beauty
In our vision there is peace
In our vision there is sunrise
Our words are borne eastward
Our words bear you on your quest
An Honor Song in the Old Style
For Vine Deloria, Jr.
Where words were first shaped
Into sacred bundles and placed
On altars of earth and stone
We made prayers of thanksgiving
glad to have been summoned
glad to have been given names
glad to have been touched by the sun
glad to have heard the silence
Where visions were first borne
upon sacred winds and glittered
on the darkness of our camps
we sang of our well-being
proud to have been summoned
proud to have named our destiny
proud to have spoken the sunrise
proud to have broken the silence
Where thunder rolled across the world
and rain rattled on the ancient trails
and on the shadows of origin
we danced the days of our dreaming
whole in the summons of life
whole in the names of our deities
whole in the radiance of the sun
whole in the silence of the stars
Aho
The Herd
Theirs is the shape of shade, grass braids
burned, black bleedings of the earth,
the crust of the Malpais.
They shimmer beyond relief;
they move and seem not to move,
inexorable as birth,
irresistible as death.
Theirs is the sound of thunder,
of rain dancing to the dawn,
of the song of origin
and the round running of winds.
Their passing is an omen
always beyond mere meaning,
always ominous and there.
Animal shield of the sun,
they bear darkness on the plain,
an endless curve of seasons
in which they persist. They stay,
seemingly available
to the mind’s eye, seemingly
present in the vision’s range.
When at last they graze away,
only the faint impression
of their having been remains—
some estimate of loss, some
sorrow of the soil. The ghost
of their image is therefore
made whole and original.
The Dead of Winter
1.
I know the winter. Cold and dark decree
The round of seasons. Solstices imply
The other side of mute eternity:
To bear, to burn, to wither, and to die.
2.
These silent winter days derange the fields,
And ravens call upon the placid sky.
Night rises with the cold, and order yields.
Stars tremble overhead, arc, flare, and die.
3.
Again the deep evening, another time.
Old voices come to me across the way.
Muffled in snow, they seem almost to mime
My wonder, but I know not what they say.
There is no solace in them, but they drift
Among the branches and the vines. They sigh
And wane into these whispers that I sift
Into sleep. There they rattle and they die.
Notebook
As a child I remarked the world in scrawls of wonder. And so do I now in the envy of age.
I dare to write of myself. I am my good subject. Besides, imaginings, not facts, are at issue. Imagination is the soul of the self.
To be or not to be besotted with words. There is the rub; but for the poet there is no question; there is only passion and mandate.
I have discovered that among the best of all healings is deep, dreamless sleep, to be still and mindless in the suspension of time.
And time is an illusion. We move through a dimension we call time, but we cannot believe in it.
Beyond every tree on the plain is a clear dawn and eternity.
In my best memory there are geese in the sky and horses beyond the river. It is winter, and snow is falling. I am becoming alive to the world. I have no words for this awakening, only a quiet beyond language.
Do I deserve the insights that come to me in the night and day? Perhaps, for they are the stepping stones that lead to wisdom, the divine confusion we call reality.
I have lived a longer time than most people on the earth. Am I therefore wise? Yes, I must believe so, for I have read the sacred signs, and they indicate that I have lived a longer time than have most people on the earth.
I have seen three things that I do not expect to see again: a double rainbow of extraordinary brilliance above the Malpais; a night sky at Lukachukai bearing countless stars so close to earth as to stun the senses; and a sunset at Chinle, in which literally half the dome of the sky was a conflagration beyond imagining. It strikes me now that these things were ephemeral and beyond my comprehension. That is appropriate, I think. Such things should not remain to be known too well, and they should occur in the realm of infinity.
/> What is it that demands sorrow and gladness of us? The balance of being, perhaps, on the scales of God.
Be still. What is the good of clocking eternity?
Indifferent and overwhelming is the sea. It is a plane for fools and heroes and lovers of the unknown.
Yes, I was that very boy who dreamed of animals and birds, and of the magic of the word, the majesty of the poem, the solace of the song.
I drove along the edge of a caldera, and a red-tail hawk appeared suddenly and sailed beside me, its feathers rippling and iridescent, in close formation. It was as if we had the same appointment with the setting sun.
For some years now I have lived with a mystery: who is the man known as Cotton-eye Joe? Where does he come from, and where does he go?
Rain at Altamira, and a winding walk to the green door in the hillside. On this side time, on the other side, timelessness. When we emerged we could not speak, so hard was the hold of eternity.
You stepped out of the abandoned Hogan, beheld the towering butte, and said, “So, you are still there.”
The verb to be and the zero, the concepts of existence and nothingness. Are these not the bookends of everything?
On the Moscow Metro we caught sight of each other, and in the long rattle of transport our eyes met and glanced away several times. It was an unworthy propriety. You were a beautiful woman, I a reader of signs. You gave me one last glance as you stepped out at Krasnopresnenskaya. It was surely an invitation. Why on earth did I not accept, then and there? What direction might my life have taken? When I excluded you I was excluded.
I was playing the part of a bear. You were fascinated. We became lovers. It is a whole story.
Beneath my window are children waiting for the school bus in the northern dark. When they are gone the light of day appears by degrees. A raven plays with a young red fox on the near edge of the wood. The raven has by far the advantage, but the fox has more fun.
You emitted a laugh that carried to the farthest room, the very one in which War and Peace was written. Yet it was nearly modest and discreet. Everyone fell silent. When we went, in a horse-drawn wagon, to Tolstoy’s grave, we knew that we had come to a milestone in the history of Russia and of literature. Somewhere in the grass, or under a century of dead leaves, lies the green stick that, as a child, Leo Nikolaevich thought would bring peace to the world.
For almost three quarters of a century, every morning a new world.
On a portal of the Gur Emir in Arabic: “He who has seen Tamerlane’s tomb has seen the world.” I confirm that this is true.
“Write little and write well,” he said.
I have taken a thousand photographs, more, but one I took in Moscow thirty years ago—a woman at a window—is worth all the others to me. Perhaps the capture of such moments is the signature of the soul.
On the Ob at dusk we landed on a small island where some men were cooking fish for our dinner. The sky was streaked with soft colors. It was almost cold, and the fire was delicious. I was composing a poem in my mind.
One night in Andalucía, we had the Alhambra to ourselves. We wandered through the exquisite gardens, the more than elaborate architecture, and we stood on the massive walls, looking down at the glittering lights of Granada below. And didn’t we see firelight flickering in the caves and hear the gypsies singing?
The village. The smell of piñon and juniper smoke. A black storm descending into the canyon. Posole simmering. All is well.
Near Minto, on the way to Susan’s dog camp, a lynx moving diagonally across the field of snow.
In Saucelito. In a restaurant overlooking the Bay, a woman in a wide-brimmed yellow hat, wearing long yellow gloves. I knew her taste. Wine and chicken livers with eggs. Something of French Impressionism, surely.
“I tried,” I said. “The angels can’t do more,” the nun said. But in my heart I knew the angels could do more.
From my window in the Marina I can see the great divide at the foot of Fillmore Street and the great ships passing by. And in the night, rain making beautiful, distorted reflections of the lights in Cow Hollow. Fog horns.
Wet grasses about his feet, and the sun’s rays streaking down. Above Rainy Mountain a cloud like smoke, and below a camp. Tepees tall and white, like great migrating birds. That is what Tso-odle saw as a boy. Ah-keah-de, they were camping.
My walking stick is made of hickory and has a fine crook to it. There is a small knot inside the crook, a kind of kernel that fits the hand nicely to the heft and balance. It would benefit a blind man, taking hold of it before going out of doors. The stick is old and substantial. A genuine antique, telling of another age and style. The shaft is not round but octagonal, fashioned with considerable care and patience. Along one of the eight surfaces there are numerous, miniscule markers, signifying a count, perhaps. One might think of Sitting Bull, counting the hundred strips of flesh that he cut from his arm before the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The stick was once painted red. You can see the pigment, like old berry stains, here and there. The man who gave it to me said that he had got it from an old people’s home at Pine Ridge. I feel that I know the man to whom it once belonged. I have felt the grip of his hand in my own.
The white blossoms of pear trees and the slashes of red earth in the grasses, the brown rivers high and roiling. The sky is the very blue of serenity, and the horizons are so far away as to exceed the reach of vision. But here, just here, is a small bird hopping.
The Rolling
Where, beyond the mind’s reach, words rained down on the long beach and the waves, each one an element of thunder, we made love and could not speak. Words were not yet in our keeping; they were emerging, just, from a place of origin it seemed that the love we made was older then the words. But the words, like thunder, rolled and were innumerable with the turning and returning waves.
[1] The Bone Strikers were the members of an early military society in the Kiowa tribe. Each man carried a large bone, which he used as a club. The Bone Strikers banded together in battle and stood their ground to the death.
[2] The exclamation, “Eh neh neh neh,” is a Kiowa formula, used most often by Kiowa women. It registers conviction or acknowledgment of that which is wondrous.
[3] This is a courting song, sung by the woman courted. She chides her suitor with delicious irony.
[4] Lullabys are sung to soothe babies and young children. They are the singing of the earth and its creatures. They instill calm and serenity in the child. They express the innocence of the child and nurture the child’s spirit. They welcome the child into the world.
[5] In the middle of the nineteenth century, when the Plains Indians had nearly lost all hope, the women began to make cradle boards—beautiful beaded works of art—for the unborn children. It was their way of vesting one last hope for a future, for survival itself.
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