Poetry of the American Southwest

[quasimodo1]

from Slabs of the Sunburnt West

Good night. it is scribbled on the panels
of the cold gray open desert.
Good night; on the big sky blanket over the
Santa Fé trail it is woven in the oldest
Indian blanket songs.

Buffers of land, breakers of sea, say it and
say it, over and over, good night, good night.

Tie your hat to the saddle
and ride, ride, ride, O Rider.
Lay your rails and wires
and ride, ride, ride, O Rider.

The worn tired stars say
you shall die early and die dirty.
The clean cold stars say
you shall die late and die clean.

The runaway stars say
you shall never die at all,
never at all.

Carl Sandburg

[quasimodo1]

..............I meet many people each sunrise. They touch me and smile
sometimes, sometimes they wonder about me like they would
about some petrified dinosaur egg. They really never see me,
they leave without ever touching the loneliness. I once overheard
two Navajos from the nearby reservation sitting in their red truck
talking. One talked about a beautiful dark-eyed Navajo girl
he'd met at a '49 last night.
"Did you ask about her clans?"
"Nope, just fun" said the lucky one with a sly voice.
I thought to be young and alive, and to feel the flesh
would feel like a drop of water touching my thirsty lips . . . sex
for me is only chalk dust, not the creamy marshmellow feeling they
laughed about.

I eavesdropped for a few more
minutes before they left without ever noticing me, listening
to them. But the one sly Navajo did say something I'll never forget.
"Don't ever waste a wish."

I made a wish.

I wished for love, for purpose, and I wished a vandal
would chisel me off this earth, Because that for me is
death, or because that for me is life, my wish.

So tell me how a man should live?

Here I am, I am next to you;
A petroglyph on a rock.






© 1998 by Hershman John
All rights reserved. No reproduction permitted
without the express permission of the author
{Navajo poet, last section of this long poem}

[quasimodo1]

http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/zuni/cushing/cush06.htm
This is "Clowns, Priests, and Festivals of the Kâ'-kâ," an 1885 essay on Zuni dance-rituals by anthropologist Frank Cushing (1857-1900). Fasts alternate with huge feasts. Here, for example is a touching post-New Year's fast involved with honoring the dead:
"... No fire is built out of doors during ten days, nor are many other things, allowable at other times, indulged in. The last night of the ten, however, is again full of ceremonial. Again the cooking-fires are busy. At daylight, however, they are all put out, and the cinders and ashes thrown to the winds of the open valley. Two nearly nude maskers of the dance may be seen in the twilight swiftly wending their way to a distant, lonely cañon, where the God of Fire is supposed to have once dwelt. There, with an ancient stick and shaft, they kindle tinder by drilling the two sticks together, and lighting a torch hurry it back to the great central estufa, where matrons, maidens and young men anxiously await the gift of New Fire. No sooner are the new flames kindled from this on the hearths of the households, than great baskets of food are cast into them, that the imperishable substance of life may be wafted upward into the outer world as food for the spirits of the ancestry and those who have died during the year just past. By no means unbeautiful is the sight of a gentle matron standing in prayer before the fireplace, dressed as if to meet beloved friends, and weeping softly to herself as she casts loaf after loaf unsparingly into the flames. Then, by all save the hereditary priests, who must continue their mortification of appetite six days longer, the great fast is broken...."

[AuntShecky]

thanks for these three intriguing postings!

[quasimodo1]

...................."After each story told, Grandma Spider Woman
Always warned me to never forget, remember and know. . .
She said a person without story isn’t a person at all
He is lost.

Dead men and dead women

Coyote lives here somewhere
Out there in the night, his tracks
Lead away from many quarrels

After the beings emerged from the First World
Coyote threw a rock into a deep lake
The beings watched it sink with a splash
And each ripple shook the beings’ anger more and more

The people were mad because of Coyote’s words:


"If the rock floats, people will live forever"
"If the rock sinks, people will die. . ."





© 1996 by Hershman John.
All rights reserved. No reproduction permitted
without the express permission of the author.
First printed version, Hayden Ferry Review, Spring 1998
{last part of the poem "The Dark World", author from Sand Springs, Arizona}

[quasimodo1]

Cynthia Gray
Taos
From the house on the High Road
the Bridge is invisible
but I know it’s there

Spread out below I can see the
crevasse carved by the Rio Grande
over lifetimes, generations
centuries, eons

{first eight lines from this poem}

[quasimodo1]

High Desert July
Wind
dancing through
garden chimes
brings the fresh-smelling
herald
of the summer rains
to these Sangre de Cristo Mountains
and the mesa
with the Spanish saint’s name
hovering protectively
over my home

{first few lines of this poem}

[Logos]

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17515
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