Paha Sapa
(For Dan Simmons)
The dead lie still.
The ghosts are silent.
This bone-dry land is not
the land of arrows carved,
of sacred stone.
The plains are dead and silent.
In cities, ghosts of those
who never lived now dwell.
Their works are not the work of man.
Their tongues are pitiful and weak:
a noise far worse than graves, or silence.
Not worthy of a death song.
Dissected by tar,
the plains no longer breathe,
no longer dream.
Where rust and road-kill live,
roads spread like a cancer.
Coyote no longer plays His tricks.
Bird and Serpent are one:
are bones,
are fossiles,
in coffins of glass:
on show or in private collections.
Night without dream (no stirring of song.)
Calling to a Heaven
the Gods have long abandoned:
Paha Sapa/Black Mountain.
Place of visions,
secret names and sacred clay and smoke.
All gone, all gone forgotten.It seems so long ago,
Paha Sapa:
the time of floating eagles
and the drums of buffalos
is gone,
Paha Sapa.
A sunset shadow, cast
upon a land that died so long ago.
The plains are dead.
The tears have dried.
All that was is now forgotten.
All my relatives/mitakuye oyasin.