She struggled and said, “Let me go!” She tried to get free but it held on. She was strangling. It held tighter and tighter, and she said, “All right, I’ll take you home with me!”
“That’s good,” the person said. It let go of her then. When she could turn and look at it, it looked like a man, a human being, dark and thin, with a small head and small eyes, but with two arms and two hands with thumb and fingers, and all seeming to be the way a human being should be. “Go on,” the man said, “and I’ll follow.”
So she went on, and the man followed.
She came to where she lived, a little town, just a few houses, a few families, somewhere in that dark, cold valley. She came there, the man following, and her people said, “Who is this with you?”
She said, “A hungry man.”
They said, “He certainly is thin. He can share what we have to eat.”
She tried to say, “No! Send him away!”—but when she started to speak her throat closed and she couldn’t breathe, as if he were still holding her by the neck. She could say nothing against him.
They asked the man what he was called, and he answered, “Dira.”
The woman had to open her door to Dira. He came in and sat down by her fire. She had to share the food she had brought for her children and her mother with him. There wasn’t much: a few bulbs and greens, that was all she had found. They were all still hungry when they had eaten, but Dira said, “Ah, that was good! That was fine!” And he seemed not so thin already.
He asked the woman, “Where is your husband?”
She said, “He died last year.”
Dira said, “I’ll take his place.”
She tried to say, “No!” but she couldn’t: her throat tightened till she thought her head would burst, and she could not breathe, until she said, “Yes.”
So Dira was her husband, and she made the best of it.
Her mother said after a while, “This husband you picked up in the woods, he doesn’t do any work.”
“He’s still weak from starving so long,” she said.
People in town said, “Why doesn’t Dira farm, or hunt, or gather? He stays in the house all day and night.”
She said, “He’s ill.”
They said, “Maybe he was ill when he came here, but look at him now!”
Because he had become quite fat—every day he got fatter, and his skin was ruddy instead of dark.
“He’s fat, and you and your family are all thinner than ever—how is that?” they asked her. But she could not say. When she tried to speak against Dira, even when he was not there with her, she strangled. The tears came into her eyes. She said, “I don’t know.”
They had planted gardens, but the summer was dark and cold. The seeds rotted in the ground. There was little to hunt; there were not many Blue Clay animals, because they too were starving and sick; there were few Obsidian animals. Nobody had food. The woman’s children grew weak and sick, with big, swollen bellies. She wept, but her husband laughed. “See, they’re like me!” he said. “We all have big bellies!” He ate everything: he grew fatter, thicker, redder, every day. The family had one cow, and there was enough grass to keep her fit; it was her milk that kept the children alive. Dira went out one day into the fields. The woman said, “There, see, my husband is going to work!” He went to where the cow was grazing, and she said, “He’s going to look after our sister there.” But what he did was drink the cow’s blood, sucking it. He did this every day and the cow could not give milk; he went on doing it, and she lay down and died. He butchered her there in the field and came home carrying the meat. He had to go back and forth several times for it all. “See how hard my husband works!” the woman said. There were tears running down her face. They saw that, her townspeople.
Her children had grown very weak without milk. The husband, Dira, always spoke kindly to them, but he gave them no meat. He ate it all. Sometimes he would say to them, the children, their mother, their grandmother. “Here, don’t you want this meat? You don’t want this food?” But when he said that, their throats would tighten and close, so they could only shake their heads; then he would eat the meat, smiling and joking. One of the children died. The other, the elder, began dying too. Dira was so fat he could no longer get up; he sat by the fire all day and night. His belly was huge, a huge ball. His skin was tight and pale red all over. His eyes were covered with fat. His arms and legs were stubs coming out of that great ball of fatness. His wife and her mother stayed beside the dying child.
The people of the town spoke together. They talked awhile, and decided to kill Dira. The men were angry and said, “A knife across that throat, a bullet in that belly!” But there was a lame woman, a visionary, who said, “Not that way, not that way. This is not a man!”
“But we are going to kill him,” they said.
“If you kill him that way, his wife and her family will die with him. You must not spill all that blood in him. It is their blood,” she said.
“Then we’ll suffocate him,” one of the men said.
“That is the way,” the lame woman said.
They went, all of them, to the house. The door was shut. They pushed it open and came in. The grandmother and mother and child lay like sticks of wood, like old bones on the floor, too weak to sit up, dying. The husband sat by the fire like a great red ball of skin. When he saw the people he changed into his own form, and put out his pliers hand, but he was too fat to move, and couldn’t catch them. They had brought with them a basin of eucalyptus oil, and they held Dira down and pushed his head into the oil, and held it there a long time. A long time he struggled and did not die, but they kept holding his head under the oil, and at last his great, wide, fat body stiffened and began to shrink. It shrank and shrank, and the wife and her mother and child sat up. It shrank more, and they stood up. It shrank down no larger than a fist, and they could speak again. It shrank down no larger than a walnut, and they could move freely and say what had happened. It shrank no larger than a thumbnail, flat and dry and dark, and the people, greeting and comforting the wife and her family, didn’t keep careful watch on it. It shrank down to something not as big as a lentil, and then scrambled out of the basin of oil, and out the door, back into the hills, to wait somewhere for another person to come by. It’s still waiting there, they say.
POEMS
FIRST SECTION
AS EXPLAINED IN “Spoken and Written Literature” in The Back of the Book, some Valley poetry was written down and some was not, but whether improvised, recited from memory, or read from writing, it was always performed aloud.
This section includes several improvisations, some well-known songs, which like all folksongs have lost authorship and belong to everybody (not all poetry in the Valley did; some of it was given, and some of it had to be earned), some children’s songs, and a few “public” pieces—poems spoken in contest or written up in public places.
A SHEPHERD’S SONG FROM CHUMO
You can have the afterbirth,
not the lamb, Coyote.
The ewe has sharp hooves,
better look out, Coyote.
I can have some girls,
not that one, Coyote.
Her mother doesn’t like me,
better look out, Coyote.
DRAGONFLY SONG
Ounmalin, Ounmalin!
Beautiful on the River!
To the barns under the dark oaks
the cattle return at evening.
The sound of their cowbells
is like the ringing of water.
From the round hill over Ounmalin
one can see all the vineyards,
and hear the people singing,
coming from the vineyards home at evening.
NOTE: A dragonfly song or poem means an improvisation, something that goes by lightly. This was spoken by Broom to a family group on a balcony of a house in Ounmalin on a summer evening, and when I said I liked it the author wrote it down and gave it to me.
A BAY L
AUREL SONG
He has to wave it,
he has to wave it like a flag
to make it stand up.
He has to stick it into mouseholes,
he has to stick it into moleholes,
he has to stick it into assholes
to make it stand up.
Let me lie down, it says.
No, he says.
Let me get some sleep, it says.
Get up, he says.
So it gets up and grows hands
and gets a knife and cuts him off.
He goes running off without one,
and it sings heya nine times and lies down
and goes to sleep.
He grows a new one
but it’s very little.
He has to lie down
and stick it into antholes.
SOME “FIVE/FOUR” POEMS FROM MADIDINOU
Spoken at a poetry session on the riverbank after work.
LOSS
My heart is heavy.
It lies down crossways,
stopping my breathing,
a stone of grieving.
JEALOUSY
That one with earrings,
what can she give you?
More wine? More mutton?
Bigger erections?
FIRST LOVE
Weeding tomatoes,
the vines smell bitter
in the hot sunlight.
A long time ago.
THE DARK GIRL
Blackwinged butterfly
turns, lights, flits, returns
to the yarrow stem,
intent, uncertain.
A FLYTING SERIES
The old word flyting, a contest of insults in rhyme, translates the Kesh word fini. The following were oral improvisations at a Wine Dance in Chumo.
You come from down the Valley.
I can tell by the way the words come out of your mouth
like crayfish getting dragged out of a hole backwards.
People keep a lot of chickens up in Chumo.
The chickens are so clever they talk like people:
Rock, rock, rock, rock, rock, rock, rockbasket!
The people in Chumo are as clever as the chickens.
Down the Valley the intelligence of the inhabitants
is manifested in their custom of brewing
small beer from dog turds.
Great minds prefer strong flavors.
In Chumo they like strong beer,
so they use cat turds.
I can tell you come from down the Valley
by the way you drag one idea around all morning
like a bitch clamped onto the dog’s penis.
There was a man in Chumo
had an idea, once,
for a few minutes.
FERNSTEM’S SONG
Sung at work by Fernstem of Kastoha-na.
Old feet
sticking out in front
of old knees,
old eyes see you
over this basket
old hands are making,
this new basket.
Old feet,
you walked a long way
to get here
in front of this basket.
Stick up in the air there,
keep on telling
this new song
to this old singing woman.
A POEM SAID WITH THE DRUM
By Kulkunna of Chukulmas.
The hawk turns crying, gyring.
There is a tick stuck in my scalp.
U I soar with the hawk
I have to suck with the tick.
O hills of my Valley, you are too complicated!
ARTISTS
Written on a white plaster wall in the workroom of the Oak Society in Telina-na.
What do they do,
the singers, tale-writers, dancers, painters, shapers, makers?
They go there with empty hands,
into the gap between.
They come back with things in their hands.
They go silent and come back with words, with tunes.
They go into confusion and come back with patterns.
They go limping and weeping, ugly and frightened,
and come back with the wings of the redwing hawk,
the eyes of the mountain lion.
That is where they live,
where they get their breath:
there, in the gap between,
the empty place.
Where do the mysterious artists live?
There, in the gap between.
Their hands are the hinge.
No one else can breathe there.
They are beyond praise.
The ordinary artists
use patience, passion, skill, work
and returning to work, judgment,
proportion, intellect, purpose,
indifference, obstinacy, delight in tools,
delight, and with these as their way
they approach the gap, the hub,
approaching in circles, in gyres,
like the buzzard, looking down, watching,
like the coyote, watching.
They look to the center,
they turn on the center,
they describe the center,
though they cannot live there.
They deserve praise.
There are people who call themselves artists
who compete with each other for praise.
They think the center
is a stuffed gut,
and that shitting is working.
They are what the buzzard and the coyote
ate for breakfast yesterday.
A VAUNTING
From the town of Tachas Touchas.
The musicians of Tachas Touchas
make flutes of the rivers, make drums of the hills.
The stars come out to listen to them.
People open the doors of the Four Houses,
they open the windows of rainbow,
to listen to the musicians of Tachas Touchas.
A RESPONSE
From the town of Madidinou.
The musicians of Tachas Touchas
make flutes of their noses, make drums of their buttocks.
The fleas run away from them.
People shut the doors in Madidinou,
they shut the windows in Sinshan,
when they hear the musicians of Tachas Touchas coming.
AN EXHORTATION FROM THE SECOND AND THIRD HOUSES OF THE EARTH
A calligraphed poster-scroll from the Serpentine heyimas of Wakwaha.
Listen, you people of the Adobes, you people of the Obsidian!
Listen, you gardeners and farmers, orcharders and vintners, shepherds and drovers!
Your arts are admirable and generous, arts of plenty and increase, and they are dangerous.
Among the tasselled corn the man says, this is my plowing and sowing, this is my land.
Among the grazing sheep the woman says, these are my breeding and caring, these are my sheep.
In the furrow the seed sprouts hunger.
In the fenced pasture the cow calves fear.
The granary is heaped full with poverty.
The foal of the bridled mare is anger.
The fruit of the olive is war.
Take care, you Adobe people, you Obsidian people, and come over onto the wild side,
don’t stay all the time on the farming side; it’s dangerous to live there.
Come among the unsown grasses bearing richly, the oaks heavy with acorns, the sweet roots in unplowed earth.
Come among the deer on the hill, the fish in the river, the quail in the meadows.
You can take them, you can eat them,
like you they are food.
They are with you, not for you.
Who are their owners?
This is the puma’s range,
this hill is the vixen’s,
this is the owl’s tree,
> this is the mouse’s run,
this is the minnow’s pool:
it is all one place.
Come take your place.
No fences here, but sanctions.
No war here, but dying; there is dying here.
Come hunt, it is yourself you hunt.
Come gather yourself from the grass, the branch, the earth.
Walk here, sleep well, on the ground that is not yours, but is yourself.
BOSO
(THE ACORN WOODPECKER)
A children’s counting-out song in Sinshan.
Boso-bird, red-hat, blacka blacka white-streak,
whackawhackawhacka on a oaktree,
walka walka backward on a joketree,
yackayackayacka goes a boso!
Yackawhacka, yackawhacka, one two three,
yackawhacka, yackawhacka, out goes he.
ALL IN THE WESTERN LAND
A children s dance song, heard In all nine towns of the Valley; the dance Is called Making the Gyre. Rhyme is characteristic of children’s songs; the meter of the translation attempts to suggest the Insistent rhythm of the dance.
CHORUS
Circle around around the house
circle around and back
everything burning burning burning
everything burning black
SOLO
O who will break the circle
O who will loose my hand
O who will be my lover
all in the western land
CHORUS
Open the circle around and out
and part and swing and pass
down along the valleys
and the yellow hills of grass
SOLO
So make and break the circle
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