505 History and politics poems

All the Sioux were defeated. Our clan got poor, but a few got richer. They fought two wars. I did not take part. No one remembers your vision or even your real name. Now the children go to town and like loud music. I married a Christian. Crazy Horse, it is not fair to hide a new vision from you. In our schools we are learning to take aim when we talk, and we have found out our enemies. They shift when words do; they even change and hide in every person. A teacher here says hurt or scorned people are places where real enemies hide. He says we should not hurt or scorn anyone, but help them. And I will tell you in a brave way, the way Crazy Horse talked: that teacher is right. I will tell you a strange thing: at the rodeo, close to the grandstand, I saw a farm lady scared by a blown piece of paper; and at that place horses and policemen were no longer frightening, but suffering faces were, and the hunched-over backs of the old. Crazy Horse, tell me if I am right: these are the things we thought we were doing something about. In your life you saw many strange things, and I will tell you another: now I salute the white man’s flag. But when I salute I hold my hand alertly on the heartbeat and remember all of us and how we depend on a steady pulse together. There are those who salute because they fear other flags or mean to use ours to chase them: I must not allow my part of saluting to mean this. All of our promises, our generous sayings to each other, our honorable intentions—those I affirm when I salute. At these times it is like shutting my eyes and joining a religious colony at prayer in the gray dawn in the deep aisles of a church. Now I have told you about new times. Yes, I know others will report different things. They have been caught by weak ways. I tell you straight the way it is now, and it is our way, the way we were trying to find. The chokecherries along our valley still bear a bright fruit. There is good pottery clay north of here. I remember our old places. When I pass the Musselshell I run my hand along those old grooves in the rock.

Black mountain black mountain blocks the earth’s light. Time—time—time to give back to God his ticket. I refuse to—be. In the madhouse of the inhumans I refuse to—live. To swim on the current of human spines. I don’t need holes in my ears, no need for seeing eyes. I refuse to swim on the current of human spines. To your mad world—one answer: I refuse. • They took—suddenly—and took—openly— took mountains—and took their entrails, they took coal, and steel they took, they took lead, and crystal. And sugar they took, and took the clover, they took the West, and they took the North, they took the beehive, and took the haystack, they took the South from us, and the East. Vari—they took, and the Tatras—they took, they took our fingers—took our friends— But we stand up— as long as there’s spit in our mouths! May 9, 1939

'In our time the destiny of man presents its meanings in political terms.' THOMAS MANN. How can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics, Yet here's a travelled man that knows What he talks about, And there's a politician That has both read and thought, And maybe what they say is true Of war and war's alarms, But O that I were young again And held her in my arms.

Choice by extinction sounded ominous to Yanks like us — we all remembered the war. But that was just Herr Schreiff’s personal English. We were on the same side now, building the thing, the thing, the VTOL fighter. What’s today? There must be some big dates coming up, historic dates. He’d say,Cold hands frog heart, and it became a gag among the engineers: Soft hands wombat heart, Sweaty hands lawnmower heart. The docs in this place want to put in a pacemaker; I said no, I’m not in this for the long run. On his birthday Schreiff brought in three bottles of schnapps and we sat around half pickled trying to do the do the debug the navigation. What a fright? Patty —     Debbie —    Susan called, wanted to know could she bring me anything. I told her,My old brain. I used to be smart, you know? I’m assuming someone is in charge of the dates, the historic dates. Schreiff had worked for Heinkel during the war, on those last-ditch plywood jet fighters that kept disintegrating in midair and killing their precious test pilots. Ah Christ, look at this mess! Where’s the thing, the thing to call the nurse? Someone needs to deal with those important dates, it’s all so disorganized.

He is for a long time bleating the embassy collection: (water-resistant cot, a resurgent stretch of storefronts to dive into, compadre,col legno, funding the new permits, pleasing room, murderous rain. Near-spring night, stars on flat blackboards, essay estate questions passed person to person. The lottery window I turn red past, hyacinth-lanced dawn. In green tree talk the transcriber dons a dark robe, a mirror. The notebook discovered the parting sun, magnificent trough, blind hair on a head of state, streak-woods in the winding road atlas—stranded shore. Pose in flight covered by weeds, claw hair-rocks, Pullulation. Push-up. Push-up. Pestilentia reeds announce—trebly isolated, a closed trio, the trinity trick-fucked—in a.

It’s mostly the same here slow as melonvines in an arctic sun where the great ball of the plane went down in nineteen thirty-five & an eskimo with a camera took a picture that stayed in his camera twenty-one years & by some chance he told an explorer who bought the film & found the crash & the bodies under tarp looking like two seals on the ice, the crumpled plane with oversized pontoons, the propeller as though it could turn again— the men, Wiley Post & Will Rogers, still twelve miles southwest of Barrow, Alaska.

At sunset from the top of the stair watching the castle mallets wrenched from their socket fell from ambush into flame flew into hiding; above the stoneware a latch like muscle hid the green; he stood waist high under the rapt ceiling and hanged the sparrow; where the kitchen had been a mirror of eggs served in a tumbler he saw the ring when a lancet pierced and threw it. In a basket and lowered it where sails enter the harbor over a parchment like dominoes; the petrel-like eyelash. To the sun and its rites were pulled the dried banners; they flew past the ruins the tower and window where ivory guided the mist on his back; he rubbed his eyes and counted them kneeling wrinkled as grass. A ghost in their nostrils put a heel at their forehead; they saw only the moon as it fasted.

O dove, fly to Aleppo with my Byzantine ode And take my greeting to my kinsman. –Mahmoud Darwish Before I was born, I saw a tissue of ingenious detours, an inextricable tangle wreathed with mistake. Perhaps the ghost does not limp away, but rather forests flee me, frightened. Look, they are setting a place for loss, clearing the table for the first glow of antiquity. Here we see William T. Walters in his little library illuminated, carefully smoothing the lip of the continent. What form bounds forward from behind but The Atlantic Railroad Coastline Co.? The whole Roman Empire was sold by ascending auction in 193 A.D. A globe enclosed. Bottomless years. The train has stopped on the platform and no one is there, for these are the Public Days, when the “Poor Association” claims the museum’s building. As if bound by the knots of invention, I found a wrong road dotted with weeds and sorrows.

(‘The Winged Hats’ — Puck of Pook’s Hill ) Rome never looks where she treads. Always her heavy hooves fall On our stomachs, our hearts or our heads; And Rome never heeds when we bawl. Her sentries pass on—that is all, And we gather behind them in hordes, And plot to reconquer the Wall, With only our tongues for our swords. We are the Little Folk—we! Too little to love or to hate. Leave us alone and you’ll see How we can drag down the State! We are the worm in the wood! We are the rot at the root! We are the taint in the blood! We are the thorn in the foot! Mistletoe killing an oak— Rats gnawing cables in two— Moths making holes in a cloak— How they must love what they do! Yes—and we Little Folk too, We are busy as they— Working our works out of view— Watch, and you’ll see it some day! No indeed! We are not strong, But we know Peoples that are. Yes, and we’ll guide them along To smash and destroy you in War! We shall be slaves just the same? Yes, we have always been slaves, But you—you will die of the shame, And then we shall dance on your graves! We are the Little Folk, we, etc.

Of old sat Freedom on the heights, The thunders breaking at her feet: Above her shook the starry lights: She heard the torrents meet. There in her place she did rejoice, Self-gather'd in her prophet-mind, But fragments of her mighty voice Came rolling on the wind. Then stept she down thro' town and field To mingle with the human race, And part by part to men reveal'd The fulness of her face— Grave mother of majestic works, From her isle-altar gazing down, Who, God-like, grasps the triple forks, And, King-like, wears the crown: Her open eyes desire the truth. The wisdom of a thousand years Is in them. May perpetual youth Keep dry their light from tears; That her fair form may stand and shine, Make bright our days and light our dreams, Turning to scorn with lips divine The falsehood of extremes!