When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through

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When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through Page 6

by Joy Harjo


  The radio doesn’t work

  but the heater does.

  The seats have seen more

  asses than a proctologist.

  I turn the key, it starts.

  I push the brake, it stops.

  What else is a car

  supposed to do?

  GAIL TREMBLAY (1945–), Onondaga and Mi’Kmaq, is a poet, mixed-media artist, and educator from Buffalo, New York. She earned her MFA in creative writing from the University of Oregon, and she has taught at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, for twenty-five years. The author of three books of poetry, Tremblay has also had her artwork displayed at museums around the country, including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.

  Indian Singing in 20th Century America

  We wake; we wake the day,

  the light rising in us like sun—

  our breath a prayer brushing

  against the feathers in our hands.

  We stumble out into streets;

  patterns of wires invented by strangers

  are strung between eye and sky,

  and we dance in two worlds,

  inevitable as seasons in one,

  exotic curiosities in the other

  which rushes headlong down highways,

  watches us from car windows, explains

  us to its children in words

  that no one could ever make

  sense of. The image obscures

  the vision, and we wonder

  whether anyone will ever hear

  our own names for the things

  we do. Light dances in the body,

  surrounds all living things—

  even the stones sing

  although their songs are infinitely

  slower than the ones we learn

  from trees. No human voice lasts

  long enough to make such music sound.

  Earth breath eddies between factories

  and office buildings, caresses the surface

  of our skin; we go to jobs, the boss

  always watching the clock to see

  that we’re on time. He tries to shut

  out magic and hopes we’ll make

  mistakes or disappear. We work

  fast and steady and remember

  each breath alters the composition

  of the air. Change moves relentless,

  the pattern unfolding despite their planning—

  we’re always there—singing round dance

  songs, remembering what supports

  our life—impossible to ignore.

  CHRYSTOS (1946–), Menominee, is a two-spirit, activist poet born in San Francisco. Her poetry collections, which focus on feminism, social justice, and Native rights, include Not Vanishing (1988), Dream On (1991), and Fire Power (1995). She received the Sappho Award of Distinction from the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice and a Lannan Literary Award for Poetry.

  The Real Indian Leans Against

  the pink neon lit window full of plaster of paris

  & resin Indians in beadwork for days with fur trim

  turkey feathers dyed to look like eagles

  abalone & bones

  The fake Indians, if mechanically activated

  would look better at the Pow Wow than the real one in plain jeans

  For Sale For Sale

  with no price tag

  One holds a bunch of Cuban rolled cigars

  one has a solid red bonnet & bulging eyes ready for war

  Another has a headdress from hell

  with painted feathers no bird on earth

  would be caught dead in

  All around them are plastic inflatable

  hot pink palm trees grinning skulls

  shepherd beer steins chuckling checkbooks

  black rhinestone cats

  & a blonde blow up fuck me doll for horny men

  who want a hole that will never talk back

  There are certainly more fake Indians

  than real ones but this is the u.s.a.

  What else can you expect from the land of sell

  your grandma sell our land sell your ass

  You too could have a fake Indian in your parlor

  who never talks back

  Fly in the face of it

  I want a plastic white man

  I can blow up again & again

  I want turkeys to keep their feathers

  & the non-feathered variety to shut up

  I want to bury these Indians dressed like cartoons

  of our long dead

  I want to live

  somewhere

  where nobody is sold

  Ceremony for Completing a Poetry Reading

  This is a give away poem

  You’ve come gathering made a circle with me of the places

  I’ve wandered I give you the first daffodil opening

  from earth I’ve sown I give you warm loaves of bread baked

  in soft mounds like breasts In this circle I pass each of you

  a shell from our mother sea Hold it in your spirit Hear

  the stories she’ll tell you I’ve wrapped your faces

  around me a warm robe Let me give you ribbonwork leggings

  dresses sewn with elk teeth moccasins woven with red

  & sky blue porcupine quills

  I give you blankets woven of flowers & roots Come closer

  I have more to give this basket is very large

  I’ve stitched it of your kind words

  Here is a necklace of feathers & bones

  a sacred meal of chokecherries

  Take this mask of bark which keeps out the evil ones

  This basket is only the beginning

  There is something in my arms for all of you

  I offer this memory of sunrise seen through ice crystals

  Here an afternoon of looking into the sea from high rocks

  Here a red-tailed hawk circles over our heads

  One of her feathers drops for your hair

  May I give you this round stone which holds an ancient spirit

  This stone will soothe you

  Within this basket is something you’ve been looking for

  all of your life Come take it Take as much as you need

  I give you seeds of a new way

  I give you the moon shining on a fire of singing women

  I give you the sound of our feet dancing

  I give you the sound of our thoughts flying

  I give you the sound of peace moving into our faces & sitting down

  Come This is a give away poem

  I cannot go home

  until you have taken everything & the basket which held it

  When my hands are empty

  I will be full

  ROBERTA HILL (ROBERTA HILL WHITEMAN) (1947–), Oneida, is a poet, fiction writer, essayist, and scholar. Her poetry collections include Star Quilt (1984, 2001), Her Fierce Resistance (1993), Philadelphia Flowers (1996), and Cicadas: New and Selected Poetry (2013). She edited an issue of About Place (2014); “Reading the Streets” (fiction) appeared in Narrative Witness: Indigenous People Australia–United States (2016). She is a professor of English and American Indian Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and is an affiliated faculty member of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.

  Dream of Rebirth

  We stand on the edge of wounds, hugging canned meat,

  waiting for owls to come grind

  nightsmell in our ears. Over fields,

  darkness has been rumbling. Crows gather.

  Our luxuries are hatred. Grief. Worn-out hands

  carry the pale remains of forgotten murders.

  If I could only lull or change this slow hunger,

  this midnight swollen four hundred years.

  Groping within us are cries yet unheard.

  We are born with cobwebs in our mouths

  bleeding with prophecies.

  Yet within this int
erior, a spirit kindles

  moonlight glittering deep into the sea.

  These seeds take root in the hush

  of dusk. Songs, a thin echo, heal the salted marsh,

  and yield visions untrembling in our grip.

  I dreamed an absolute silence birds had fled.

  The sun, a meager hope, again was sacred.

  We need to be purified by fury.

  Once more eagles will restore our prayers.

  We’ll forget the strangeness of your pity.

  Some will anoint the graves with pollen.

  Some of us may wake unashamed.

  Some will rise that clear morning like the swallows.

  In the Longhouse, Oneida Museum

  House of five fires, you never raised me.

  Those nights when the throat of the furnace

  wheezed and rattled its regular death,

  I wanted your wide door,

  your mottled air of bark and working sunlight,

  wanted your smokehole with its stars,

  and your roof curving its singing mouth above me.

  Here are the tiers once filled with sleepers,

  and their low laughter measured harmony or strife.

  Here I could wake amazed at winter,

  my breath in the draft a chain of violets.

  The house I left as a child now seems

  a shell of sobs. Each year I dream it sinister

  and dig in my heels to keep out the intruder

  banging at the back door. My eyes burn

  from cat urine under the basement stairs

  and the hall reveals a nameless hunger,

  as if without a history, I should always walk

  the cluttered streets of this hapless continent.

  Thinking it best I be wanderer,

  I rode whatever river, ignoring every zigzag,

  every spin. I’ve been a fragment, less than my name,

  shaking in a solitary landscape,

  like the last burnt leaf on an oak.

  What autumn wind told me you’d be waiting?

  House of five fires, they take you for a tomb,

  but I know better. When desolation comes,

  I’ll hide your ridgepole in my spine

  and melt into crow call, reminding my children

  that spiders near your door

  joined all the reddening blades of grass

  without oil, hasp or uranium.

  These Rivers Remember

  In these rivers, on these lakes

  Bde-wa’-kan-ton-wan saw the sky.

  North of here lies Bdo-te,

  Center of the Earth. Through their songs,

  the wind held on to visions.

  We still help earth walk

  her spiral way, feeling

  the flow of rivers

  and their memories of turning

  and change.

  Circle on circle supports us.

  Beneath the tarmac and steel in St. Paul,

  roots of the great wood are swelling

  with an energy no one dare betray.

  The white cliffs, I-mni-za ska,

  know the length of Kangi Ci’stin-na’s tears.

  He believed that words spoken

  held truth and was driven into hunger.

  Beneath the cliffs, fireflies flickered

  through wide swaths of grass.

  Oaks grew on savannahs, pleasant

  in the summer winds where deer

  remain unseen.

  These rivers remember their ancient names,

  Ha-ha Wa’-kpa, where people moved

  in harmony thousands of years

  before trade became more valuable than lives.

  In their songs, the wind held

  on to visions. Let’s drop our burdens

  and rest. Let’s recognize our need

  for awe. South of here, the rivers

  meet and mingle. Bridges and roads,

  highway signs, traffic ongoing.

  Sit where there’s a center

  and a drum, feel the confluence

  of energies enter our hearts

  so their burning begins to matter.

  This is Maka co-ka-ya kin,

  The Center of the Earth.

  /// AUTHOR’S NOTE: The poem refers to the Dakota villages and way of life before white settlement, along with a reference to the Dakota–U.S. War of 1862. The Science Museum Park Project incorporated lines of poems written by poets from communities of color into the small park on Robert Street in St. Paul, Minnesota. Dr. Chris Mato Nunpa taught me the Dakota words. He graciously corrected my spellings and provided the following translations of the Dakota words. The word Bde-wa’-kan-ton-wan, the name of one of the fires of the Isanti (Santee) Dakota, means “Dwellers by Mystic Lake.” The Dakota word I-mni-za ska translates as “white cliffs” and is the Dakota name for St. Paul. Kangi Ci’stin-na’ means “Little Raven” and refers to the warrior and chief called “Little Crow,” who was the leader of the conflict. Ha-ha Wa-kpa has one possible translation as “River of the Falls” and refers to St. Anthony Falls. The Center of the Earth, Maka co-ka-ya kin or Macoke Cocaya Kin, is the confluence where the Minnesota River meets the Mississippi. Dr. Mato Nunpa explained that it can also be translated to mean “the Center of the Universe,” which fits with the notion that the Dakota came from the stars. The confluence is a sacred place which is also called Bdo-te, translated as “Mendota.”

  LINDA LEGARDE GROVER (1950–), Anishinaabe, is an enrolled member of the Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe. A memoirist, fiction writer, and poet, she has received numerous awards, including the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award and the Northeastern Minnesota Book Award for Poetry. She is a professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth, researching the effects of government Indian education policy on children and families.

  Everything You Need to Know in

  Life You’ll Learn in Boarding School

  Speak English. Forget the language of your

  grandparents. It is dead. Forget their teachings.

  They are unGodly and ignorant. Cleanliness is

  next to Godliness. Indians are not clean. Your

  parents did not teach you proper hygiene. Stay

  in line. This is a toothbrush. Hang it on the hook

  next to the others. Do not allow the bristles to

  touch. This spreads the disease that you bring

  to school from your families. Make your bed with

  mitered corners. A bed not properly made will be

  torn apart. Start over. Remember and be grateful

  that boarding school feeds and clothes you. Say

  grace before meals. In English. Don’t cry. Crying

  never solved anything. Write home once every

  month. In English. Tell your parents that you are

  doing very well. You’ll never amount to anything.

  Make the most of your opportunities. You’ll never

  amount to anything. Answer when the teacher

  addresses you. In English. If your family insists on

  and can provide transportation for you to visit home

  in the summer, report to the matron’s office immediately

  upon your return. You will be allowed into the

  dormitory after you have been sanitized and de-loused.

  Busy hands are happy hands. Keep yourself occupied.

  You’ll never amount to anything. Books are our friends.

  Reading is your key to the world. Forget the language

  of your grandparents. It is dead. If you are heard speaking

  it you will kneel on a navy bean for one hour. We will ask

  if you have learned your lesson. You will answer. In English.

  Spare the rod and spoil the child. We will not spare the rod.

  We will cut your hair. We will shame you. We will lock you

  in the basement. Learn from that. Improve yourself.

  You�
�ll never amount to anything. Speak English.

  RAY YOUNG BEAR (1950–), Meskwaki, was raised on the Meskwaki Tribal Settlement in Iowa, which was established in 1856 by his maternal great-great grandfather, a hereditary chief. Young Bear, who speaks and writes in both Meskwaki and English, began publishing poetry just after graduating from high school in 1969. Since then, he has published five collections of poetry including a collected works, Manifestation Wolverine (2015), and two works of fiction, most notably Black Eagle Child (1992). His awards include the 2016 American Book Award for Poetry and a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship. He has taught creative writing at numerous schools, including the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.

  John Whirlwind’s Doublebeat Songs, 1956

  1.

  Menwi—yakwatoni—beskonewiani.

  Kyebakewina—maneniaki

  ketekattiki

  ebemanemateki

  ebemanemateki

  //

  Good-smelling are these flowers.

  As it turned out, they were milkweeds

  dance-standing

  as the wind passes by,

  as the wind passes by.

  2.

  Inike—ekatai—waseyaki

  netena—wasesi.

  Memettine

  beskattenetisono.

  Memettine.

  //

  It is now almost daylight,

  I said to the firefly.

  For the last time

  illuminate yourself.

  For the last time.

  Our Bird Aegis

  An immature black eagle walks assuredly

  across a prairie meadow. He pauses in mid-step

  with one talon over the wet snow to turn

  around and see.

  Imprinted in the tall grass behind him

  are the shadows of his tracks,

  claws instead of talons, the kind

  that belongs to a massive bear.

  And he goes by that name:

  Ma kwi so ta.

  And so this aegis looms against the last

  spring blizzard. We discover he’s concerned

  and the white feathers of his spotted hat

 

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