The wind was a care-free soul 
    That broke the chains of earth, 
And strode for a moment across the land
    With the wild halloo of his mirth.
He little cared that he ripped up trees, 
    That houses fell at his hand, 
That his step broke calm on the breast of seas, 
    That his feet stirred clouds of sand. 

But when he had had his little joke, 
    Had shouted and laughed and sung, 
When the trees were scarred, their branches broke, 
    And their foliage aching hung, 
He crept to his cave with a stealthy tread, 
    With rain-filled eyes and low-bowed head.

Wild seas of tossing, writhing waves,
A wreck half-sinking in the tortuous gloom;
One man clings desperately, while Boreas raves,
     And helps to blot the rays of moon and star,
     Then comes a sudden flash of light, which gleams on shores afar.

There is a faith that weakly dies 

When overcast by clouds of doubt, 

That like a blazing wisp of straw 

A vagrant breeze will flicker out. 

Be mine the faith whose living flame 

Shall pierce the clouds and banish night, 

Whose glow the hurricanes increase

To match the gleams of heaven’s night. 

A mournful voice sings to quick beats
in my head, but I know nothing of heaven. In a frenzy

of whirling wind, headlights on a white wall, I pull
over the truck. Late April & the sky has broken
its neck. I swear I see faces pass the windshield. The howl

of voices I’ve forgotten in the cracks of the doors. Whistling
through windows. I close my eyes & count

their bones. Wonder if this is the dream where children are
buried. Why each move towards home takes me
further away. The cab rocks & creaks. When I open

my eyes, every tree is erased, Every stone & bird & gravel
road. Stepping outside, I lean into snow, wanting

to be lost again. To know that kind of violence. How cold needles
the insides of my nostrils. My mother, in a ragged babushka,
bent over Rohatyn’s fields. How I began in a place I can’t find

with my hands. Now, how not to welcome the snow’s blades,
a torn blood vessel, the fire in my fists. How when wings plume

on cold a spring morning, I am blinded instead.
But, I whisper even though there is no one
to hear. Even as I wonder who’s talking, —who I hold

so tightly inside. Like a hummingbird, before
it flies out of my throat & falls

to the ground. Before I palm its heart
& find it still beating.

1.

We came to the island. We stayed in the house.
Rain and sun. Bougainvillea. Pink cedar.
How many shadows slipped along walls
or whetted the leaves of century plants?

2.

We saw clouds from the windows. Far boats.
You left the bed and came back shaking.
Your mother, her white hair, or something
whose shape would never, at last, find you.

3.

Night palms clattering like hungry bowls.
Crazy whistling of the island peepers.
We walked to the water. Walked back.
We walked to the water . . . walked back.

to estimate one’s position
without instruments
or celestial observations

calculating direction and distance
traveled from the last known fix
while accounting for tides, currents, grief

drift         numbness
sudden storms of pain
unexpected joy

to reckon is to believe
something true
to reckon with the dead

is to believe I can know them
an airy thinness
gleaming

despite
the distance
traveled

I’d like to know how far
I’ve gone
how much farther there is

to go         how absence
unfathomable
becomes

something I can carry

you leer at me from the darkened tree line, howl from the closet
with no door. In the calf-high grass below the garden, the red lines
of your questions harrow me to my knees. Where are the words
for the fact of your once flesh, for your missing? I plunge knuckles
into damp soil, plant the pear tree, tear the old porch boards,
force a pinnacle of blood from the nail-hole in the ball of my foot.
How does it feel to touch? you taunt. How does it feel to own, to lose, to bleed?
Your laughter is a water glass breaking between my hands in the sink—
sudden invisible fracture, slow splinter working its way under.
Is this what it means to descend? Stories cut straps into your flesh,
burrow your skin with welts. But if you erase a story—
if I press my arms tight to the doorframe, then step away—
my arms will try to fly from my body.

^{at the Sipsey River}

make small steps.
in this wild place
there are signs of life
everywhere.
sharp spaces, too:
the slip of a rain-glazed rock
against my searching feet.
small steps, like prayers—
each one a hope exhaled
into the trees. please,
let me enter. please, let me
leave whole.
there are, too, the tiny sounds
of faraway birds. the safety
in their promise of song.
the puddle forming, finally,
after summer rain.
the golden butterfly
against the cave-dark.
maybe there are angels here, too— 
what else can i call the crown of light 
atop the leaves?
what else can i call
my footsteps forward,
small, small, sure?

I take the train to Auschwitz from the white
Kraków of Mongols and Copernicus
to the extermination camp, and night
of nights for souls herded by Brownshirt soulless.
Soon after the war, the train’s almost empty.
I step on the rust platform where SS
Schutzstaffel doctor Josef Mengele,
for lined-up Jews, chose barracks or gas shower.

Baby shoes, ovens. Gallows for the unruly.
The Arbeit Macht frei gate. I leave the tower-
ing smokestacks, trudge back to the platform. Truly 
gruesome. Bored, stunned by time, a workman
drops a coin in the jukebox just above
us: “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band.”
The beat’s so strong we tap our feet, and kiss
the poisoned air with “All You Need Is Love.”

sent regrets by smoke // dull coatings of a time // now ambered // into its search for // a former light // when the world was not dark // just lightless // except for those flashpoints of skin // little currents that mark // the only things // we ever shared // to know we both craved // in the same brilliant age // a desire with gravity // the seedy impact of two bodies // who collide by choice // even at the cost of systems // still breaking // wills and testaments // that keep what remains // of you abroad // in a home you tried to make // but never bedded // until this restless sleep

To live without the one you love
an empty dream never known
true happiness except as such youth

watching snow at window
listening to old music through morning.
Riding down that deserted street

by evening in a lonely cab
     past a blighted theatre
oh god yes, I missed the chance of my life

     when I gasped, when I got up and
        rushed out the room
          away from you.

      I went by the Druid stone 
   That stands in the garden white and lone,   
And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows   
   That at some moments there are thrown
   From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing,   
   And they shaped in my imagining
To the shade that a well-known head and shoulders   
   Threw there when she was gardening.

      I thought her behind my back,
   Yea, her I long had learned to lack,
And I said: “I am sure you are standing behind me,   
   Though how do you get into this old track?”
   And there was no sound but the fall of a leaf   
   As a sad response; and to keep down grief
I would not turn my head to discover
   That there was nothing in my belief.

      Yet I wanted to look and see
   That nobody stood at the back of me;
But I thought once more: “Nay, I’ll not unvision   
   A shape which, somehow, there may be.”
   So I went on softly from the glade,
   And left her behind me throwing her shade,   
As she were indeed an apparition—
   My head unturned lest my dream should fade.

When evenings cast pale shadows on the earth,
And silence, like a vast mysterious ghost,
Stifles the land and sea from hill to coast,
And buries all that tropic suns gave birth,
When by myself I pace the darkened shore,
And think of this unhappy lot of mine,
The pain and grief the fates to me assign,
I sigh for you, O mother I adore!
That I could seek your bosom as of old,
And, nestling there, bare secrets that oppress,
Accuse these that my love would disposses,
Whose hearts to cold desires and base are sold!
O mother dear! When death relieves our sighs,
Shall we in heaven, meet, in Paradise?

My friends are dead who were

the arches    the pillars of my life 

the structural relief when

the world gave none.

My friends who knew me as I knew them

their bodies folded into the ground or burnt to ash.

If I got on my knees

might I lift my life as a turtle carries her home?  

Who if I cried out would hear me?

My friends—with whom I might have spoken of this—are gone.

^{in loving memory of Concepcion Cruz Agullana}

Everywhere is a cemetery,

and there will be no funeral.      on either side of the Pacific Ocean.

            No one will give last rites to my lola,    No guessing nurse will call my name or hers

I will have heard no doctor’s steely voice                             There’ll be no waiting room

to call her ‘the body.’             Over the body.      There will be no priest

            swinging a pendulum of incense         no prayers      no rosaries       there’s no money

                        No undertaker will proclaim her life                       There’ll be no glass plate     covering

her wooden casket.           There will be no casket   it’s too expensive              There will be no party

no lumpia            no noodles for no life long enough

                           No black attire               No hands clasping tissue or other hands

‘The body’ will not be seen          There will be my grandma in an urn–a tiny basket

            her curled body that lilted into the afterlife        after dementia   twenty years after grandpa

                                                  there’s no room for every  body

there’s no house for everybody to come in and stay    no room for sorrows    There will be no placeholder no

land     no candles        no water         no six-foot empty         she will be unmarked

                                                            my lola, an unnamed earthquake

           No one will hear her long name how it stretches a sunset   if my lola dies and no one sees   is

she still my lola?  is a canyon a series of cliffs?   there’s no place in the apartment for what rituals

maybe they will send her to the Philippines my grandma is a maybe                   and we are not they

         did you know                                                                                  when airlines carry the deceased

          they are called passengers

    they travel in their coffins        passengers in seats     are called        existing passengers

this small poem the only eulogy            where we’ll put my grandma     her existence laid to rest in a

poem

                      in this non-ilokano language                  a killer              rows and rows of dirt

money doesn’t grow                        maybe someone there       will bury her

                 how will i carry her     when only darkness has the space?

where will we put my grandma when we can’t afford our grief?

How was I supposed to know 
Medgar? I only met the man once 
and even then, freshly fallen,

back flesh a sea split red 
with god’s permission. I do 
as I am asked and no more—

back, chest, window, wall, sinew,
bone glass, brick—as quick as it 
began. For you so loved the son 

of man, you begat the sweat-swaddled
plunk of viscera on concrete. And man 
so loved the silence he begat the close 

hold of a barrel, the blank stare cutting 
clean to the other side: a family and greens
on the table two low beds where

stuffed animals still hold the child-
smell of milk, baby powder, Ovaltine.

Outside, the Magnolias, whispering.
Inside, the silence locking in place.

Today, longing for my father, 
I saw a solitary bleached owl skim 
the dark grasses. It swept so low 
to the ground it might have buried itself. 
I did not know my father so how could I 
be lonely for that guardian?

When I was a newborn, I didn’t let
my father hold me. I cried in his presence
till my mother came. My father would shrug, 
lean into his high backed chair, to read the paper,
to smoke his pipe while he heard his wife
sing to his only daughter. 

In the woods, I summon him
and my eyes fool me as a dark haired
jay shifts a twig, or a stone rolls 
into the creek. I think I hear his footsteps
on the path, but it is only the oak
hip twitching to the afternoon’s cold wind. 

When I was born, he must have felt
the rupture in his chest, dark matter funneling
through his veins, and he must have known 
he would not be here for the rest but he ushered 
me into that brightly lit room, the earth
with all its lumen.

Father, I know you are here, 
the only place you must be, 
where the heavy branches 
lean into bright air.

I put down my sack to eat everything
I have carried with me. When I am done, 
the ants come swarming in to take 
the last of it, to cleanse the earth 
of abundance and discard.

Walking in these woods, I believe
that tall shadows and shifts of light 
mean that something is at work beyond me. 

Midway home and the redwood
are letting go their furious scent,
where you are the tree left standing
and I am this frozen salt flat, 
hemisphere of crushed snow. 

This is my son that you have taken,

Guard lest your gold-vault walls be shaken,

Never again to speak or waken.

This, that I gave my life to make,

This you have bidden the vultures break—

Dead for your selfish quarrel’s sake!

This that I built all of my years,

Made with my strength and love and tears,

Dead for pride of your shining spears!

Just for your playthings bought and sold

You have crushed to a heap of mold

Youth and life worth a whole world’s gold—

This was my son, that you have taken,

Guard lest your gold-vault walls be shaken—

This—that shall never speak or waken!

And there was banging on the bins that night
and many frightened people woke
and noted down the hour.
The clock of hunger-strikers dead is not ignored with ease
and ‘please, God, please keep loved ones safe’ was then
repeated round and round and round
like rosaries told upon a bead,
or shoes upon the ground of orange walking.

The five demands, the five-year plan
that saw a blanket round a man,
the dirty protest, Thatcher stance,
that gave a new and startling glance
at just how deep a people’s fury goes.
And God knows each single mother’s son
was sick of hunger,
all those younger faces became stripped and old
eyes shrunk back and foreheads cold & bold
with skin that’s limp and paper thin,
barely separating blood and bone from stone.

And some did say ‘enough is now enough’
and others said that ‘never, never, never will a martyr die,
he’ll smile upon us long from mural’s wall.’
And others said ‘what nation’s this?
we’re abandoned on our own—
all this for clothes to warm some dying bones.’
And some said ‘that’s a traitor’s talk’
and others bowed their heads and thought that they
would hate to go that way.

Then Bobby Sands was dead
and there was banging on the bin lids on the Falls
echoed through to Shankill gospel halls.
And there was trouble on the street that night
and black flags started hanging while
people started ganging up,
black flags marking out the borders of belonging
the thin black barricade
that’s been around for thirty years
and stayed a fragile point up till today and cries
of how ten mothers’ sons all starved and died
when all they ate was hope and pride

^{translated from the Russian by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi}

When the church-village slumbers
And the last songs are sung, 
When the grey mist arising, 
Is o’er the marshes hung, 
’Tis then the woods forsaking, 
Their way cross country taking. 
Nine howling wolves come hungering for food.

Behind the first,—the grey one,—
    Trot seven more of black. 
Close on their hoary leader;
    As rearguard of the pack 
The red wolf limps, all bloody, 
His paws with gore still ruddy 
As after his companions grim he pants.

When through the village lurking
    Nought gives them check or fright, 
No watch dog dares to bellow,
    The peasant ghastly white. 
His breath can scarce be taking. 
His limbs withhold from shaking— 
While prayers of terror freeze upon his lips!

About the church they circle 
    And softly slink away
To prowl about the priest’s farm,
    Then of a sudden they
Are round the drink shop turning, 
Fain some bad word be learning— 
From peasants drinking noisily within.

With fully thirteen bullets
    Thy weapon must be armed, 
And with a wad of goat’s hair;
    Then thou wilt fight unharmed. 
Fire calmly,—and before all 
Will the leader, the grey, fall, 
The rest will surely follow one by one.

When the cock wakes the village
    From out its morning dream. 
Thou wilt behold the corpses—
    Nine she-wolves by the stream! 
On the right lies the grey one, 
To left in frost the lame one— 
All bloody,—God pardon us sinners!

Волки

Когда в сeлах пустеет,
Смолкнут песни селян
И седой забелеет
Над болотом туман,
Из лесов тихомолком
По полям волк за волком
Отправляются все на добычу.

Семь волков идут смело.
Впереди их идeт
Волк осьмой, шерсти белой;
А таинственный ход
Заключает девятый.
С окровавленной пятой
Он за ними идёт и хромает.

Их ничто не пугает.
На село ли им путь,
Пёс на них и не лает;
А мужик и дохнуть,
Видя их, не посмеет:
Он от страху бледнеет
И читает тихонько молитву.

Волки церковь обходят
Осторожно кругом,
В двор поповский заходят
И шевелят хвостом,
Близ корчмы водят ухом
И внимают всем слухом,
Не ведутся ль там грешные речи?

Их глаза словно свечи,
Зубы шила острей.
Ты тринадцать картечей
Козьей шерстью забей
И стреляй по ним смело,
Прежде рухнет волк белый,
А за ним упадут и другие.

На селе ж, когда спящих
Всех разбудит петух,
Ты увидишь лежащих
Девять мeртвых старух.
Впереди их седая,
Позади их хромая,
Все в крови... с нами сила Господня!

Tweak laws 
Stratify identity 
Threaten activists 
Silence dissent 
Round up the poets 
Punish opposition 
Blame the victims 
Appropriate their oppression 
Sing of your righteousness

Say it with the right accent 
So that it sounds acceptable

Do it in a suit and tie 
So that it looks professional

Kill them in the dead of night 
So that it seems accidental

Give the weeping mother a care package 
To appear sentimental

Tell us it was a mistake 
To fan the flames of an inferno

Hate with such ferocity 
That it could feel like love

All my loved ones are gone

Those who inhabited my distant town

How I miss
A moment of a glance
An enigmatic smile
That contagious laugh
The hand gently placed on a hip
The nodding head
The moment of empathy
When I felt loved and accepted

My dead relatives

Pulses of life that
Explode in an instant
Then fade away
Twinkling, flickering
In the air of the times

I will join them one day
I will cross the veil
Between palm trees and flamboyanes
I’ll hug them if they want me to
Or will watch them from afar

Now their memory
—And sometimes a shadow passing by, a gentle touch, tiny sounds— 
Accompany me in the afternoons

It’s what I share with them

They left a trace in my days
An unfathomable beauty
A slight sadness

My dead relatives

Ineffable testimonies
Of the love that permeates
Existence

Mis familiares muertos

Se han ido todos mis muertos

Los que habitaban mi pueblo lejano

Cómo extraño
El segundo de una mirada
La sonrisa enigmática
Aquella risa contagiosa
La mano en la cadera
La cabeza que asiente
El instante de empatía
En que me sentí querida y aceptada

Mis familiares muertos

Pulsos de vida que
Estallan en un instante
Luego se desvanecen
Rutilantes, parpadeando
En el aire de los tiempos

A ellos me uniré algún día
Cruzaré el velo
Entre palmeras y flamboyanes
Los abrazaré, si quieren
O los contemplaré a distancia

Ahora su memoria
—Y a veces sus celajes, toques leves, ruiditos—
Me acompañan en las tardes

Es lo que comparto con ellos

Dejaron un rastro en mis días
Una belleza insondable
Una suave tristeza

Mis familiares muertos

Testimonios inefables
Del amor que permea
La existencia         

I have spent seventy years trying to persuade you,
to manipulate you with the poems I’ve written,
to remember my people as if they’d been yours—
to flesh out in evocative detail my parents,
my grandparents, cousins, uncles and aunts—
knowing that one day I’ll be gone, and without me
to remember them, the poems I’ve written
will have to go it alone. I owe my people
so much, and I want them to enjoy—if not
immortality—a few more good years in the light,
my grandfather patching a tire for a quarter,
his brother weaving a rag rug on his sun porch,
my mother at her humming sewing machine,
my father un-thumping a bolt of brocade,
measuring for new draperies. Perhaps they were
for you, to draw open and see on your lawn
Cousin Eunice Morarend playing her accordion.

Someone. Tell. Me. How.
To. Live. Now. In. The. After.
Where. We. Are. He. Is. Not.
Voices. Too. Many. Voices.
This. Sorrowing. Boy. Of. Ours.
Who. Told. Us. Demons. Are. Real.
And. Now. I. Know. We. All.
Are. Falling. Every. Day. Falling
Into. A. Crack. In. The. Earth.
The. Ground. Of. Being. Split. Open.
Stunning. It. Is. This. Darkness.

Down in the deep my spirit will creep
    Out of the window into the air
No one knows where.
     Deathless and lifeless, sleepless of fears
Indians will keep their spirits near—
    Creeping about in the open air
No one knows where.

Down in the deep my spirit will creep,
    Fearless of sorrow and fearless of time,
Indian will seek a spirit to help his creed.
     Out of the window into the air
No one knows where.
    Indian spirit shall share
Deathless and lifeless, sleepless of fear
     The noise of my spirit shall speak very clear.

Out of the window into the air
     No one knows where
When far into the darkened night a change in the air
    The Indian spirit shall creep out of no where.

In spite of all the learn’d have said,

   I still my old opinion keep;

The posture that we give the dead,

   Points out the soul’s eternal sleep.

Not so the ancients of these lands--

   The Indian, when from life releas’d,

Again is seated with his friends,

   And shares again the joyous feast. °

His imag’d birds, and painted bowl,

   And ven’son, for a journey dress’d,

Bespeak the nature of the soul,

   Activity, that knows no rest.

His bow, for action ready bent,

   And arrows, with a head of stone,

Can only mean that life is spent,

   And not the finer essence gone.

Thou, stranger, that shalt come this way,

   No fraud upon the dead commit,

Yet, marking the swelling turf, and say,

   They do not lie, but here they sit.

Here, still a lofty rock remains,

   On which the curious eye may trace

(Now wasted half by wearing rains)

   The fancies of a ruder race.

Here, still an aged elm aspires,

   Beneath whose far-projecting shade

(And which the shepherd still admires)

   The children of the forest play’d!

There oft a restless Indian queen,

   (Pale Shebah, with her braided hair)

And many a barbarous form is seen

   To chide the man that lingers there.

By midnight moons, o’er moistening dews,

   In habit for the chase arrayed,

The hunter still the deer pursues,

   The hunter and the deer, a shade.

And long shall timorous fancy see

   The painted chief, and pointed spear,

And reason’s self shall bow the knee

   To shadows and delusions here.

Animals come down through stars
to reach the valley. A coyote with
its nose pressed in a rabbit hole.
Two Sandhill cranes as tall as rain,
and listening north. And when a cougar
screams its human scream, I’m suddenly
a child again, awake, the parched air
raked by drumfire blasts, window panes
all gleam and vast, animals angling
through ripe alfalfa fields. My grandmother
holding me to the thunder-headed sky
as if I were an offering. Saying, There,
see how meager we are made. How our
bones ring with fury and light.

In the year of providence, in the year of vast greenery, in the rainy season, 
when the creeks tore through the mountainside and flooded the fields,  
when the rains cut great black gouges in the hill behind the church  
so the bones poked through where graves once were— 
In the chaotic days, in the days of mess and brilliance, in the scatter 
of bones, of coffin splinter and bits of cloth where we scavenged 
among the decayed in the afternoon mists—such treasures we  
discovered, coins with faces no one knew, a crucifix golden in the sun,  
a ring and a brooch. We were children and wild, enjoyed the muck and loam  
until the old priest waved his shotgun in the air and we scattered, laughing. 
And then such a silence while we hid among the roots and bones 
of the ancient dead. I have never been happier than that.  

+

I wrote those lines three years ago, imagining decay I’d never see, 
though perhaps you have lived something like it where you are, 
hundreds of years from now, when I have been forgotten. 
In that iteration, they are my own bones poking from the loam 
behind the wrecked churchyard of my imagination. And you, whom I’ll  
never know, pick happily through them for coins. I was thinking about this poem 
at the grocery store, by the refrigerated meats, I was thinking of my distant future, 
and you who live there, when an old man fell suddenly to the floor.   
He lay there beside a broken mayonnaise jar. When I knew he wasn’t hurt,  
I helped him to the bathroom, where I dabbed at his shirt  
with one of those brown paper towels that come on endless rolls.  
He was sweating. He smelled of wine. He offered me $5 for my trouble.  
I didn’t want his money, but I took it just to make him happy.

My Forest Brave, my Red-skin love, farewell;
We may not meet to-morrow; who can tell
What mighty ills befall our little band,
Or what you’ll suffer from the white man’s hand?
Here is your knife! I thought ’twas sheathed for aye.
No roaming bison calls for it to-day;
No hide of prairie cattle will it maim;
The plains are bare, it seeks a nobler game:
’Twill drink the life-blood of a soldier host.
Go; rise and strike, no matter what the cost.
Yet stay. Revolt not at the Union Jack,
Nor raise Thy hand against this stripling pack
Of white-faced warriors, marching West to quell
Our fallen tribe that rises to rebel.
They all are young and beautiful and good;
Curse to the war that drinks their harmless blood.
Curse to the fate that brought them from the East
To be our chiefs—to make our nation least
That breathes the air of this vast continent.
Still their new rule and council is well meant.
They but forget we Indians owned the land
From ocean unto ocean; that they stand
Upon a soil that centuries agone
Was our sole kingdom and our right alone.
They never think how they would feel to-day,
If some great nation came from far away,
Wresting their country from their hapless braves,
Giving what they gave us—but wars and graves.
Then go and strike for liberty and life,
And bring back honour to your Indian wife.
Your wife? Ah, what of that, who cares for me?
Who pities my poor love and agony?
What white-robed priest prays for your safety here,
As prayer is said for every volunteer
That swells the ranks that Canada sends out?
Who prays for vict’ry for the Indian scout?
Who prays for our poor nation lying low?
None—therefore take your tomahawk and go.
My heart may break and burn into its core,
But I am strong to bid you go to war.
Yet stay, my heart is not the only one
That grieves the loss of husband and of son;
Think of the mothers o’er the inland seas;
Think of the pale-faced maiden on her knees;
One pleads her God to guard some sweet-faced child
That marches on toward the North-West wild.
The other prays to shield her love form harm,
To strengthen his young, proud uplifted arm.
Ah, how her white face quivers thus to think,
Your tomahawk his life’s best blood will drink.
She never thinks of my wild aching breast,
Nor prays for your dark face and eagle crest
Endangered by a thousand rifle balls,
My heart the target if my warrior falls.
O! coward self I hesitate no more;
Go forth, and win the glories of the war.
Go forth, nor bend to greed of white men’s hands,
By right, by birth we Indians own these lands,
Though starved, crushed, plundered, lies our nation low . . .
Perhaps the white man’s God has willed it so.

I snatch at my eagle plumes and long hair.
A hand cut my hair; my robes did deplete.
Left heart all unchanged; the work incomplete.
These favors unsought, I’ve paid since with care.
Dear teacher, you wished so much good to me,
That though I was blind, I strove hard to see.
Had you then, no courage frankly to tell
Old-race problems, Christ e’en failed to expel?

My light has grown dim, and black the abyss
That yawns at my feet. No bordering shore;
No bottom e’er found my hopes sunk before.
Despair I of good from deeds gone amiss.
My people, may God have pity on you!
The learning I hoped in you to imbue
Turns bitterly vain to meet both our needs.
No Sun for the flowers, vain planting seeds.

I’ve lost my long hair; my eagle plumes too.
From you my own people, I’ve gone astray.
A wanderer now, with no where to stay.
The Will-o-the-wisp learning, it brought me rue.
It brings no admittance. Where I have knocked
Some evil imps, hearts, have bolted and locked.
Alone with the night and fearful Abyss
I stand isolated, life gone amiss.

Intensified hush chills all my proud soul.
Oh, what am I? Whither bound thus and why?
Is there not a God on whom to rely?
A part of His Plan, the atoms enroll?
In answer, there comes a sweet Voice and clear,
My loneliness soothes with sounding so near.
A drink to my thirst, each vibrating note.
My vexing old burdens fall far remote.

“Then close your sad eyes. Your spirit regain.
Behold what fantastic symbols abound,
What wondrous host of cosmos around.
From silvery sand, the tiniest grain
To man and the planet, God’s at the heart.
In shifting mosaic, souls doth impart.
His spirits who pass through multiformed earth
Some lesson of life must learn in each birth.”

Divinely the Voice sang. I felt refreshed.
And vanished the night, abyss and despair.
Harmonious kinship made all things fair.
I yearned with my soul to venture unleashed.
Sweet freedom. There stood in waiting, a steed
All prancing, well bridled, saddled for speed.
A foot in the stirrup! Off with a bound!
As light as a feather, making no sound.

Through ether, long leagues we galloped away.
An angry red river, we shyed in dismay,
For here were men sacrificed (cruel deed)
To reptiles and monsters, war, graft, and greed.
A jungle of discord drops in the rear.
By silence is quelled suspicious old fear,
And spite-gnats’ low buzz is muffled at last.
Exploring the spirit, I must ride fast.

Away from these worldly ones, let us go,
Along a worn trail, much travelled and—Lo!
Familiar the scenes that come rushing by.
Now billowy sea and now azure sky.
Amid that enchanted spade, as they spun
Sun, moon, and the stars, their own orbits run!
Great Spirit, in realms so infinite reigns;
And wonderful wide are all His domains.

Hark! Here in the Spirit-world, He doth hold
A village of Indians, camped as of old.
Earth-legends by their fires, some did review,
While flowers and trees more radiant grew.
“Oh, You were all dead! In Lethe you were tossed!”
I cried, “Every where ’twas told you were lost!
Forsooth, they did scan your footprints on sand.
Bereaved, I did mourn your fearful sad end.”

Then spoke One of the Spirit Space, so sedate.
“My child, We are souls, forever and aye.
The signs in our orbits point us the way.
Like planets, we do not tarry nor wait.
Those memories dim, from Dust to the Man,
Called Instincts, are trophies won while we ran.
Now various stars where loved ones remain
Are linked to our hearts with Memory-chain.”

“In journeying here, the Aeons we’ve spent
Are countless and strange. How well I recall
Old Earth trails: the River Red; above all
The Desert sands burning us with intent.
All these we have passed to learn some new thing.
Oh hear me! Your dead doth lustily sing!
‘Rejoice! Gift of Life pray waste not in wails!
            The maker of Souls forever prevails!’”

Direct from the Spirit-world came my steed.
The phantom has place in what was all planned.
He carried me back to God and the land
Where all harmony, peace and love are the creed.
In triumph, I cite my Joyous return.
The smallest wee creature I dare not spurn.
I sing “Gift of Life, pray waste not in wails!
The Maker of Souls forever prevails!”

Being of your blood,
Through thick and thin,
      I have stood up for you.
When the world’s most devilish
Intrigue of humanity was set
And was coiling around you tighter and tighter—
      I have stood up for you.
When public sentiment was against you
And sent you to oblivion,
      I have stood up for you.
When the country was hysterically enraged
For defending your loved ones
And your birthright of priority—
      I have stood up for you.
When you were tagged as “Indians”
And outlawed creatures—
      I have stood up for you.
Haunted and hunted on thy domain,
With no chance of redress
But doomed, as though thy fate—
      I have stood up for you.
When you were described and pictured
And cartooned as cruel and savage—
      I have stood up for you.
When prejudice, hate and scorn
Sounded the keynote against you—
      I have stood up for you.
When starving and naked,
At the verge of your annihilation
By swords in the hands of criminals—
      I have stood up for you.
When the palefaces said
There was no hope for you—
      I have stood up for you.
When you were condemned and relegated
To the reservation system of hell—
      I have stood up for you.
When in prison and in bondage,
When you could neither speak nor see—
      I have stood up for you.
When decreed by the people across the sea
That you could neither learn nor be taught,
      I have stood up for you.
When it was put down black and white
That you could neither work nor support yourselves,
And that you were lazy and worthless—
      I have stood up for you.
When politics and greed were working you
For all that you were worth—
      I have stood up for you.
When everything you possessed was disappearing,
And your personal rights ignored—
      I have stood up for you.
As the Indian Bureau, like an octopus,
Sucked your very life blood,
      I have stood up for you.
For your freedom and citizenship,
By the abolishment of the Indian Bureau,
      I have stood up for you.
When the Indian Bureau says, “Were you freed
You would starve and be cheated”—
Only to feed its 7000 employees—
      I have stood up for you.
When you were judged “incompetent”
For freedom and citizenship by the Indian Bureau—
      I have stood up for you.
God knows that I am with thee day and night;
That is why I have stood up for you.
It might have been self-sacrifice.
It might have been the hand of God leading me.
Whatever it was, you have proven yourselves to be
What I have stood up for you to be.

Little born baby-bird, lapped in your nest,
      Wrapped in your nest,
      Strapped in your nest,
Your straight little cradle-board rocks you to rest;
      Its hands are your nest;
      Its bands are your nest;
It swings from the down-bending branch of the oak;
You watch the camp flame, and the curling grey smoke;
But, oh, for your pretty black eyes sleep is best,—
Little brown baby of mind, go to rest.

Little brown baby-bird swinging to sleep,
      Winging to sleep,
      Singing to sleep,
Your wonder-black eyes that so wide open keep,
      Shielding their sleep,
      Unyielding to sleep,
The heron is homing, the plover is still,
The night-owl calls from his haunt on the hill,
Afar the fox barks, afar the stars peep,—
Little brown baby of mine, go to sleep.

When each white moon, her lantern idly swinging
    Comes out to join the star night-watching band,
Across the grey-green sea, a ship is bringing
    For me a letter, from the Motherland.

Naught would I care to live in quaint old Britain,
    These wilder shores are dearer far to me,
Yet when I read the words that hand has written,
    The parent sod more precious seems to be.

Within that folded note I catch the savour
    Of climes that make the Motherland so fair,
Although I never knew the blessed favour
    That surely lies in breathing English air.

Imagination’s brush before me fleeing,
    Paints English pictures, though my longing eyes
Have never known the blessedness of seeing
    The blue that lines the arch of English skies.

And yet my letter brings the scenes I covet,
    Framed in the salt sea winds, aye more in dreams
I almost see the face that bent above it,
    I almost touch that hand, so near it seems.

Near, for the very grey-green sea that dashes
    ’Round these Canadian coasts, rolls out once more
To Eastward, and the same Atlantic splashes
    Her wild white spray on England’s distant shore.

Near, for the same young moon so idly swinging
    Her threadlike crescent bends the selfsame smile
On that old land from whence a ship is bringing
    My message from the transatlantic Isle.

Thus loves my heart that far old country better,
    Because of those dear words that always come,
With love enfolded in each English letter
    That drifts into my sun-kissed Western home.

^{In Muskoka}

Lichens of green and grey on every side;
And green and grey the rocks beneath our feet;
Above our heads the canvas stretching wide;
And over all, enchantment rare and sweet.

Fair Rosseau slumbers in an atmosphere
That kisses her to passionless soft dreams.
O! joy of living we have found thee here,
And life lacks nothing, so complete it seems.

The velvet air, stirred by some elfin wings,
Comes swinging up the waters and then stills
Its voice so low that floating by it sings
Like distant harps among the distant hills.

Across the lake the rugged islands lie.
Fir-crowned and grim; and further in the view
Some shadows seeming swung ’twixt cloud and sky,
Are countless shores, a symphony of blue.

Some northern sorceress, when day is done,
Hovers where cliffs uplift their gaunt grey steeps,
Bewitching to vermilion Rosseau’s sun,
That in a liquid mass of rubies sleeps.

The scent of burning leaves, the camp-fire’s blaze,
The great logs cracking in the brilliant flame,
The groups grotesque, on which the firelight plays,
Are pictures which Muskoka twilights frame.

And Night, star-crested, wanders up the mere
With opiates for idleness to quaff,
And while she ministers, far off I hear
The owl’s uncanny cry, the wild loon’s laugh.

                     ^(Tennyson)

Time and its ally, Dark Disarmament,
           Have compassed me about,
Have massed their armies, and on battle bent
           My forces put to rout ;
But though I fight alone, and fall, and die,
           Talk terms of Peace?   Not I.

They war upon my fortress, and their guns
           Are shattering its walls ;
My army plays the cowards’ part, and runs,
           Pierced by a thousand balls ;
They call for my surrender. I reply,
           “Give quarter now?   Not I.”

They’ve shot my flag to ribbons, but in rents
           It floats above the height ;
Their ensign shall not crown my battlements
           While I can stand and fight.
I fling defiance at them as I cry,
           “Capitulate?   Not I.”

^(Acrostic)

Crown of her, young Vancouver; crest of her, old Quebec;
Atlantic and far Pacific sweeping her, keel to deck.
North of her, ice and arctics; southward a rival’s stealth;
Aloft, her Empire’s pennant; below, her nation’s wealth.
Daughter of men and markets, bearing within her hold,
Appraised at highest value, cargoes of grain and gold.

Up the dusk-enfolded prairie,
   Foot-falls, soft and sly,
Velvet cushioned, wild and wary,
   Then––the coyote’s cry.

Rush of hoofs, and roar and rattle,
   Beasts of blood and breed,
Twenty thousand frightened cattle,
   Then––the wild stampede.

Pliant lasso circling wider
   In the frenzied flight––
Loping horse and cursing rider,
   Plunging through the night.

Rim of dawn the darkness losing
   Trail of blackened soil;
Perfume of the sage brush oozing
   On the air like oil.

Foothills to the Rockies lifting
   Brown, and blue, and green,
Warm Alberta sunlight drifting
   Over leagues between.

That’s the country of the ranges,
   Plain and prairie land,
And the God who never changes
   Holds it in His hand.

This is the world
so vast and lonely
without end, with mountains
named for men
who brought hunger
from other lands,
and fear
of the thick, dark forest of trees
that held each other up,
knowing fire dreamed of swallowing them
and spoke an older tongue,
and the tongue of the nation of wolves
was the wind around them.
Even ice was not silent.
It cried its broken self
back to warmth.
But they called it
ice, wolf, forest of sticks,
as if words would make it something
they could hold in gloved hands,
open, plot a way
and follow.

This is the map of the forsaken world.
This is the world without end
where forests have been cut away from their trees.
These are the lines wolf could not pass over.
This is what I know from science:
that a grain of dust dwells at the center
of every flake of snow,
that ice can have its way with land,
that wolves live inside a circle
of their own beginning.
This is what I know from blood:
the first language is not our own.

There are names each thing has for itself,
and beneath us the other order already moves.
It is burning.
It is dreaming.
It is waking up.

Ask me about the time
my brother ran towards the sun
arms outstretched. His shadow chased him
from corner store to church
where he offered himself in pieces.

Ask me about the time
my brother disappeared. At 16,
tossed his heartstrings over telephone wire,
dangling for all the rez dogs to feed on.
Bit by bit. The world took chunks of
my brother’s flesh.

Ask me about the first time
we drowned in history. 8 years old
during communion we ate the body of Christ
with palms wide open, not expecting wine to be
poured into our mouths. The bitterness
buried itself in my tongue and my brother
never quite lost his thirst for blood or vanishing
for more days than a shadow could hold.

Ask me if I’ve ever had to use
bottle caps as breadcrumbs to help
my brother find his way back home.
He never could tell the taste between
a scar and its wounding, an angel or demon.

Ask me if I can still hear his
exhaled prayers: I am still waiting to be found.
To be found, tell me why there is nothing
more holy than becoming a ghost.

We travel carrying our words.
We arrive at the ocean.
With our words we are able to speak
of the sounds of thunderous waves.
We speak of how majestic it is,
of the ocean power that gifts us songs.
We sing of our respect
and call it our relative.

Translated into English from O’odham by the poet.

’U’a g T-ñi’okı˘

T-ñi’okı˘ ’att ’an o ’u’akc o hihi
Am ka:ck wui dada.
S-ap ‘am o ’a: mo has ma:s g kiod.
mat ’am ’ed.a betank ’i-gei.
’Am o ’a: mo he’es ’i-ge’ej,
mo hascu wud.  i:da gewkdagaj
mac ’ab amjed.  behě g ñe’i.
Hemhoa s-ap ‘am o ’a: mac si has elid, mo d.  ’i:mig.

In a world of loss

     gratitude is what 

          I demand for keeping 

     precious catch

within my reach.

     No one despises 

          the shepherd for

     collecting his flock. 

No one accuses 

     the watchman of 

          making a captive 

     of his charge.

I’m like a holster, 

     or sheath, all function 

          and no fury. Don’t 

     you worry as I 

swallow you whole. Those 

     ulcers in my gut 

          are only windows,

     the stoma punched 

in my throat is just 

     a keyhole. Don’t be shy.

          Hand me the rattle 

     of your aching heart

 and I’ll cradle you, 

     bird with broken wing. 

          Let me love you. I

     will hold your brittle 

bones together. I’ll 

     unclasp your beak

         so you can sing.

     It’s a world of always 

leaving but here

     you can always stay.

To Certain Poets About to Die

Take your fill of intimate remorse, perfumed sorrow,
Over the dead child of a millionaire,
And the pity of Death refusing any check on the bank
Which the millionaire might order his secretary to scratch off
And get cashed.

  Very well,
You for your grief and I for mine.
Let me have a sorrow my own if I want to.

I shall cry over the dead child of a stockyards hunky.
His job is sweeping blood off the floor.
He gets a dollar seventy cents a day when he works
And it’s many tubs of blood he shoves out with a broom day by day.

Now his three year old daughter
Is in a white coffin that cost him a week’s wages.
Every Saturday night he will pay the undertaker fifty cents till the debt is wiped out.

The hunky and his wife and the kids
Cry over the pinched face almost at peace in the white box.

They remember it was scrawny and ran up high doctor bills.
They are glad it is gone for the rest of the family now will have more to eat and wear.

Yet before the majesty of Death they cry around the coffin
And wipe their eyes with red bandanas and sob when the priest says, “God have mercy on us all.”

I have a right to feel my throat choke about this.
You take your grief and I mine—see?
To-morrow there is no funeral and the hunky goes back to his job sweeping blood off the floor at a dollar seventy cents a day.
All he does all day long is keep on shoving hog blood ahead of him with a broom.

The weight of ashes
from burned-out camps.
Lodges smoulder in fire,
animal hides wither
their mythic images shrinking
pulling in on themselves,
all incinerated
fragments
of breath bone and basket 
rest heavy
sink deep
like wintering frogs.
And no dustbowl wind
can lift
this history
of loss.

Now fertilized by generations—
ashes upon ashes,
this old earth erupts.
Medicine voices rise like mists
white buffalo memories
teeth marks on birch bark 
forgotten forms
tremble into wholeness.

And the grey weathered stumps,
trees and treaties
cut down
trampled for wealth.
Flat Potlatch plateaus
of ghost forests
raked by bears
soften rot inward
until tiny arrows of green
sprout
rise erect
rootfed
from each crumbling center.

Some will never laugh
as easily.
Will hide knives
silver as fish in their boots,
hoard names
as if they could be stolen
as easily as land,
will paper their walls
with maps and broken promises,
scar their flesh
with this badge
heavy as ashes.

And this is a poem
for those
apprenticed
from birth.
In the womb
of your mother nation
heartbeats
sound like drums
drums like thunder
thunder like twelve thousand
walking
then ten thousand
then eight
walking away
from stolen homes
from burned out camps
from relatives fallen
as they walked
then crawled
then fell.

This is the woodpecker sound
of an old retreat.
It becomes an echo.
an accounting
to be reconciled.
This is the sound
of trees falling in the woods
when they are heard,
of red nations falling
when they are remembered.
This is the sound
we hear
when fist meets flesh
when bullets pop against chests
when memories rattle hollow in stomachs.    

And we turn this sound
over and over again
until it becomes
fertile ground
from which we will build
new nations
upon the ashes of our ancestors.
Until it becomes
the rattle of a new revolution
these fingers
drumming on keys.

            after George Jackson

Because something else must belong to him,
More than these chains, these cuffs, these cells—
Something more than Hard Rock’s hurt,
More than remembrances of where men
Go mad with craving—corpuscle, epidermis,
Flesh, men buried in the whale of it, all of it,
Because the so many of us mute ourselves,
Silent before the box, fascinated by the drama
Of confined bodies on prime-time television,
These prisons sanitized for entertainment &;
These indeterminate sentences hidden, because
We all lack this panther’s rage, the gift
Of Soledad &; geographies adorned with state numbers
&; names of the dead &; dying etched on skin,
This suffering, wild loss, under mass cuffs,
Those buried hours must be about more
Than adding to this surfeit of pain as history
As bars that once held him embrace us.