Category: Poems & poem-like things

Esteban (3)

For those who know, the road to paradise
is as short as the distance
between two breaths . . .
Who said that? He murmurs it
again in the voice of the sententious
old fart who taught him Nahuatl
& catches himself, repeats it
in Arabic, then in his mother’s Manding,
his gaze lost in the ceiling’s
contest of lights.

From somewhere in the next room
a wash of sun: by the lack of color
close to noon, he guesses.
A slow-burning log throws up
an intermittent flame–figures
of the moment stretching
grotesque tangles of arms & legs,
the ambient light turned shadow,
a sudden ground.

Dear Mother, I am beginning
to distrust these reports about
the Seven Cities. I am wearing doubt
like a vulture’s ruff of feathers
at the base of its naked red neck.
Down along the desert coastline
all the people dressed that way,
but here they are modest in cotton–
master spinners. In either case,
they treat me well. I’m
no longer so good at sleeping
directly on the ground.

He half-rises on the reed mat
to examine the form at his side,
count the even swells that make
her breasts rock gently at anchor.

What new worlds might be unfolding
beneath those eyelids? He peers
more closely, as if (despite
the obvious glow of health)
to diagnose. Watches how
her lashes flutter, pulsing:
a walker’s rhythm. By this
& the breath count he divines
a heavy load, or perhaps
a steepening path.
The number of breaths between pauses
grows steadily shorter: 49, then 42,
34, 25, 13.

Ah, what patterns–what science his far-
off step-father could’ve
teased from such an accounting!
For this is one hole in his knowledge
Esteban regrets: the art of seeing
through numbers.
He’d been too young, resented
the endless restrictions imposed
by inauspiciously numbered days
& hours. Now he wonders
if the omen-reading, the numerology
hadn’t had something to do with
the insight that the world itself
eludes enumeration?

(To be continued.)

Reader (8)

The possibility of entities and occurrences being regarded as basically similar is
very intriguing to the western mind in view of the Aristotelian tradition of
opposing these notions. . . . Both . . . can be characterized in terms of distance
and boundedness . . . [It’s possible] that some events are regarded by [Tohono
O’odham] as having will . . . In the analysis of Papago nominal number, having
will was shown to be the distinguishing attribute of animate entities.
MADELEINE MATHIOT
“Papago Semantics”

My heart turns giddy
I wander in a daze
hai-ya my heart
an unbearable feeling
running toward this toward that
an unbearable feeling
ANON. PIMA (AKIMEL O’ODHAM) ANT SONG
(adapted from the translation by Lloyd Paul and Donald Bahr of a 31-song
sequence assembled and sung by Andy Stepp and Clair Seota)

The hero is only welcome on troubled days.
MALINKE PROVERB

Shiwanna (2) (conclusion)

The holy warriors of Shiwanna
descend to the slaughter, sparing only
a single pair of children.
They smash the fences, free
the herds of deer & mountain sheep
who need no prompting to escape
back into the wild.

Such a one-sided victory is dangerous.
As long as the Ashiwi live at the Middle Place
they must look after this tribe of ghosts.
They feed & clothe them, sing
their songs word-for-word
& dance their dances. The two
survivors carry their name forward
as a thirteenth clan.

Everywhere a warrior falls
the Earth Mother in gratitude
sprouts a miniature pueblo,
a rainhouse made from sand. Ants
of whatever color will fill
the priestly offices. In the end
very little gets resolved in the way
one might expect. The dream
follows dream-logic, & the roles
with all the romance belong
to the others. But with each reenactment
something vital is restored.
Freed from their wardens
the animals return to the wild, yes,
but the ones with claws & canines
are already there–& there—
& here . . .
__________

a miniature pueblo, a rainhouse: In the stylized art of Pueblo Indians, rain clouds always have a rectilinear and stepped appearance. It struck me as I was studying the literature on the Zuni and their neighbors, for whom so much public religiosity seems focused on bringing rain, that their very architecture represented an attempt to attract the favor of the rain gods through mimesis. The collecting of scalps (in a communal scalp house, in the case of the Zuni) was also connected with rain-bringing magic, as indicated by a quote in the last Reader section. The top of the head was homologized with cloud-covered peaks. Thus, cloud, mountain, pueblo and head were analogous nodes in a dense allusive web. Ants and ant-mounds were seen as microcosms of the human world.

Shiwanna (2) (cont’d)

Thump unthump the great
      &nbsp clay drum out of time
thump unthump however they stop
      &nbsp their breath or cover
eyes & ears & mouths they can’t
      &nbsp unthump miss
      &nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp this
UNTHUMP the skipped heart-
beat UNTHUMP the unraveled
tapestry UNTHUMP shapeshifter’s hoop
the twisted spine UN-
THUMP.

The road unwinds clear
to the fontanel, open fist
someone’s sister has anointed
with yucca suds, bloom
unclenching once in
a hundred years. The gods
are forever unfinished.
Always at the Beginning
they are auguring themselves
from the waters above,
below . . .

But what about those dirty-
faced heroes? They are acting
like the rawest of raw recruits.
They make a game of everything,
killing for sport. And on

the fourth day, from
their shrine beside the little lake
within the younger of the cones
inside the Salt, the hero twins
at last unriddle it: where the sorceress
hides her vital spark. A stone
among stones. On this lake-
within-a-lake, they see it
in a literal flash.

Now they are racing each other to the battle scene.

Now the elder brother hurls a rabbit stick & misses.

Now the younger gives it his best gambler’s cast.

Now he scores a hit.

As the stones spill from
the split gourd
the Chakwena topples, the wind
roaring from her chest.

Shiwanna (2) (cont’d)

Chakwena Woman,
black-skinned ogre,
runs back & forth in front of her white-
robed warriors, catching the arrows.
Her calabash rattle is in constant motion
like a hive of hornets. When the Ashiwi
advance with their medicine priests
she directs her followers to plug
their nostrils with cotton, breathe
only through a cloth.
By the third day the Kyanakwe
seem invincible, even capturing
four of the Ashiwi gods–
though one escapes, & one remains
so obstreperous they think
he must be part female, put him
to grinding corn. Make him don
the dress the Chakwena scorns.

But what happens then
is a thing of genius:
one half of his hair coils up on his scalp–
squash blossom, hummingbird wing–
while the other half still hangs
straight, like a man’s.
Thus from this contest there emerges
something good: a wholly new part
in the sacred repertoire.
__________

black-skinned ogre: As mentioned elsewhere, black and red represent cosmic polarities for a large swath of native North America. White is also often included as a stand-in for black. Presuming that “red” stands for all animating colors (via the association with blood, ergo heart/breath), the two yin-yang poles might better be thought of as black-and-white vs. color.

a thing of genius: This incident is indeed the mythological origin of the berdache or third gender in Zuni cosmology. Notice that in this matrilinear, matrifocal society, women are perceived as being just as strong as men, albeit in a different way (they possess innately those qualitites that boys must strive to acquire through initiation into the priesthood). In a sense, the presence of a socially accepted transsexual figure is one very good measure of sexual equality. In the last 150 years, some of the most influential members of the Zuni tribe have been berdaches. Their position between genders appears to make them especially adept at bridging the gap beween White and Indian ways, without feeling that they have to choose between the two.

Shiwanna (2) (cont’d)

The Cactus Society, the Ant Fraternity,
the Hunters, the Bow Priesthood–
in each of the six towns
they tie feathered willow wands
as bait for the spirit beings.
For four times four days & nights
they mix their medicines. Some
for nightmares, some for seeds
of panic. Some to bring rain
to loosen the enemy’s bowstrings, & some
to turn the water in their springs
to liquid fire.

The Salt belongs to herself alone–
how can she be hoarded?
The game animals go only to those
who know the protocols, whose hearts
are clean. How can they be penned?
Sorcery on such a scale
cannot go unanswered.

The medicine priest of the Big Shell Order
of the Helix Society
paces the kiva, growling, snuffling,
blinking his Black Bear eyes,
clacking his teeth.
He drags a claw counter-sunwise
around the prayermeal painting
in front of the altar: gouges
a four-fold road that spirals in.
Where the predator spirits lead
the warriors can never falter.

Shiwanna (2)

The only safe way to dream of the dead
is to dream the dream in common:
to sing it,
chant it,
drum & rattle it,
to dance a reenactment in the plaza.
To bring it under the Word Priest’s purview,
a regular gear in the yearly round
or the wider quadrennial helix.
To perform it with gentle thoughts
for the living as for the dead–all spirits;
for friend & enemy alike–all beings:
chromatic, exact in its parts.
To charm,
to enchant . . .

Chakwena Woman,
builder of the great corral,
cannot be killed.
Her village commands
the pilgrims’ road to the lake
of Old Lady Salt,
two day’s south of Shiwanna:

in the bottom of a wide brown bowl
strange water shimmers,
a mirage that holds its ground
at one’s approach. White as
a cloud that never shrinks
or drifts, whiter than milk.
Two dark cones jut from its surface.

Nothing could be clearer
than that this
there, this immensity
circumscribed by
a natural fence, remain
sacrosanct. Yet
the Chakwena’s people, the Kyanakwe,
enter the Salt with empty hands.
They only take. They keep
others off–or steal the offerings.
Their young men & women pollute
the Grandmother’s skirts with blood,
with spilled seed.

To be continued.
__________

Might the figure of Chakwena Woman have been based on, or influenced by, memories of Esteban? Anthropologist Elsie Clews Parkins, in her comparative study on Pueblo Indian Religion (1939), advanced the opposite suggestion: that the reception afforded the historical Esteban was influenced by his coincidental resemblance to Chakwena Woman, which Parsons assumed to be an entirely mythical figure.

For oral societies like Shiwanna, I don’t believe that what we call history and myth can ever be fully disentangled. Like other Pueblo peoples, the Ashiwanna regard their masked dancers as partaking in the reality of the spirit beings (kachina in Hopi, kokko in Zuni) that they depict. And in any case, the “gods” are “present” (given presence, making a present of themselves) in any activity performed in a sacred manner – including warfare.

Zuni Salt Lake is still a site of pilgrimage for many tribes in the region, and the Zuni tribe takes its stewardship responsibilities very seriously. They recently led a successful coalition effort to oppose a plan to mine coal in the near vicinity – a decisive battle in a 20-year war to preserve the Salt.

Reader (7)

While Westerners might see the battle between night and day as a battle for
dominance, Native Americans see the battle itself as a striving for homeostasis.
KATHRYN GABRIEL
Gambler Way

For indeed, the enemy,
Even though he was without value . . .
Yet he was a water being;
He was a seed being.
* * * *
Though in his life
he was a person given to falsehood,
He has become one to foretell
How the world will be,
How the days will be.
ZUNI INFORMANT OF RUTH L. BUNZEL
“Prayers of the Scalp Dance,” Word Priest’s speech

Marcos 2 (conclusion)

A raven circling the next valley
glides back, & spiraling low, folds
one wing & rolls,
turning on its axis
like a slow black windmill. Then
with a few powerful strokes
rejoining the current, floats back
up over the ridge, the stony ravines
echoing with its hoarse cries.

A hurried conference takes place
among the few dozen escorts native
to this portion of the route.
Marcos hears laughter & the hum
of bowstrings being stretched.
They leave at a trot, the raven croaking
from somewhere far upslope.
A herd of deer in the next valley
says one of the Mexicans–or so
they think. But Marcos remembers Elijah,

& knowing from his own childhood
enough about the strange ways of ravens–
far more, in fact, than these
jaded aristocrats–has perfect faith in Providence.
Oh taste & see,
he recites from the Psalter,
his nostrils already flaring in anticipation,
tongue gingerly testing wind-cracked lips.
__________

Marcos remembers Elijah: The prophet Elijah was famously fed by ravens in the wilderness. See 1 Kings 17:3-6

We can presume that Marcos has read Cabeza de Vaca’s account, and thus is aware, at some level, of the extreme reverence that Indians in this region feel toward deer – the sacrificial animal par excellance. Later Jesuit missionaries in northwest New Spain seem to have been fairly tolerant toward what we might call the cult of the sacred venison heart, taking it to be a divinely inspired intuition of the role of Christ. The deer dancer occupies a central position in the ceremonial life of the otherwise Catholic Yaqui; for the un-Christianized Huichol, Deer is part of a sacred trinity that also includes Maize and Peyote.