by Joy Harjo
Like melting snows on Cavanaugh.
In the door I sit, my feet in spring water.
I am old. Sippokni sia.
Black like crow’s feather, my hair;
Long and straight like hanging rope;
My people proud and young.
Now like hickory ashes in my hair,
Like ashes of old campfire in the rain.
Much civilization bow my people;
Sorrow, grief and trouble sit like blackbirds on fence.
I am old. Sa Sippokni hoke.
RUTH MARGARET MUSKRAT BRONSON (1897–1982), Cherokee, was born on the Delaware County Indian Reservation and attended Mount Holyoke College on a scholarship, graduating in 1925. She worked as head of the scholarship and loan program at the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C., and later as the executive secretary of the National Congress of American Indians. A specialist in American Indian Affairs, Bronson also wrote a high school textbook titled Indians Are People Too.
Sentenced
(A Dirge)
They have come, they have come,
Out of the unknown they have come;
Out of the great sea they have come;
Dazzling and conquering the white man has come
To make this land his home.
We must die, we must die,
The white man has sentenced we must die,
Without great forests we must die,
Broken and conquered the red man must die,
He cannot claim his own.
They have gone, they have gone,
Our sky-blue waters, they have gone,
Our wild free prairies they have gone,
To be the white man’s own.
They have won, they have won,
Thru fraud and thru warfare they have won,
Our council and burial grounds they have won,
Our birthright for pottage that white man has won,
And the red man must perish alone.
LYNN RIGGS (1899–1954), Cherokee, was a poet and a playwright. He was born in Claremore, Oklahoma and attended the University of Oklahoma. Although he was a poet as well, Riggs is most famous for his play Green Grow the Lilacs, on which the famous musical Oklahoma! is based.
A Letter
I don’t know why I should be writing to you,
I don’t know why I should be writing to anyone;
Nella has brought me yellow calendulas,
In my neighbor’s garden is sun.
In my neighbor’s garden chickens, like snow,
Drift in the alfalfa. Bees are humming;
A pink dress, a blue wagon play in the road;
Guitars are strumming.
Guitars are saying the same things
They said last night—in a different key.
What they have said I know—so their strumming
Means nothing to me.
Nothing to me is the pale pride of Lucinda
Washing her hair—nothing to anyone:
Here in a black bowl are calendulas,
in my neighbor’s garden, sun.
LOUIS LITTLE COON OLIVER (1904–1991), Mvskoke, was Euchee of the Racoon clan from the Chattahoochee region, though he lived much of his life among the Cherokee in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. He was the recipient of the first Alexander Posey Literary Award in 1987. That same year the University of Oklahoma’s English department named Oliver the Poet of Honor at Oklahoma Poets Day.
Mind over Matter
My old grandmother, Tekapay’cha
stuck an ax into a stump
and diverted a tornado.
In minutes we would have been destroyed.
It struck the little town of Porter
ripping up the railroad tracks,
twisted the rails and stood them up.
There was power in that twister.
There was power in my grandmother.
Those who doubt, let them doubt.
The Sharp-Breasted Snake
(Hōkpē Fuskē)
The Muskogee’s hokpi—
fuski (Loch Ness
Monster)
Travelled here
by the Camp of
The Sac and Fox;
Thru the alluvial
Gombo soil, flailing
Thrashing-up rooting
Giant trees;
Ploughed deep
With its sharp breast.
Come to rest by
Tuskeegi Town, buried
its self in a lake of
mud to rest. The
warriors of Tustanuggi
were ordered to shoot
it with a silver tipped
arrow. With a great
roar and upheaval The
Snake moved on;
winding by Okmulgee
To enter (Okta hutchee)
South Canadian River.
Thus his ploughed
journey, The Creeks
called (Hutchee
Sofkee) Deepfork
River.
One, Cholaka,
observed The Snake
had hypnotic Power.
Could draw a person
into a swirling
whirlpool. It
made a sound
Like a
Tinkling
silver
Bell.
O
k
i
s
c
e.
Medicare
(No strings attached)
Asthmatic and wheezing I tromped
through sandburrs and bullnettles,
white sandy soils—hot winds.
Weaved through postoak runners
—sawtooth briars.
Stopped to rest and smoke a Camel.
Like a fugitive from the law
bypassing the clear clean roads,
Why?
I’m a fullblooded Indian—that
is why.
I’m going to see old Nokose
for him to diagnose my illness.
He lives in an old and sturdy
cabin of oak logs.
Two big Indian dogs came out
to sniff me over.
Though their hackles are up they never
bark.
They are part of the mysticism
of their owner,
and their scrutiny of a stranger
is conveyed.
There is a rapport twixt Indian and Indian
. . . no lengthy conversations, just
presence and silence.
Finally old Nokose began
to relate the cause of my
illness.
Humped and seeming in a trance
he spoke of entities in the spirit
world:
The slimeless snail, the legless ant
the microscopic demons
the little blue-winged hunter
wasp.
Much beyond my understanding.
He arose and went to his
backroom
I could hear him singing in
a monotone.
I expected to smell an odor
of wild beasts,
but there was a pleasant, medicinal
whiff of mint, sage and cedar.
A white feather hung from a joist
in the center of the room
creating a mystifying air.
Old Nokose shuffled back
looked to the feather and said:
“If my diagnosis has been
right
You will turn in approval.”
It seemed so long before it moved
—twisting, slowly around.
He handed me a sheaf of herbs
a tiny box of yellow dust.
Early morning for four weeks
I did as he told me.
I breathe freely with no pain
. . . and for some mysterious reason
my desire to smoke is dead.
I can say I ow
e the man
my life,
but would he take any money?
NO!
MARY CORNELIA HARTSHORNE (1910–1980), Choctaw. Hartshorne won a literary essay contest in 1929 when she was a student at Tulsa University. As a result of her essay, she was flown to Hollywood, California, to meet silent film stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks.
Fallen Leaves
(An Indian Grandmother’s Parable)
Many times in my life I have heard the white sages,
Who are learned in the knowledge and lore of past ages,
Speak of my people with pity, say, “Gone is their hour
Of dominion. By the strong wind of progress their power,
Like a rose past its brief time of blooming, lies shattered;
Like the leaves of the oak tree its people are scattered.”
This is the eighty-first autumn since I can remember.
Again fall the leaves, born in April and dead by December;
Riding the whimsied breeze, zigzagging and whirling,
Coming to earth at last and slowly upcurling,
Withered and sapless and brown, into discarded fragments
Of what once was life; dry, chattering parchments
That crackle and rustle like old women’s laughter
When the merciless wind with swift feet coming after
Will drive them before him with unsparing lashes
’Til they are crumbled and crushed into forgotten ashes;
Crumbled and crushed, and piled deep in the gulches and hollows,
Soft bed for the yet softer snow that in winter fast follows
But when in the spring the light falling
Patter of raindrops persuading, insistently calling,
Wakens to life again forces that long months have slumbered,
There will come whispering movement, and green things unnumbered
Will pierce through the mold with their yellow-green, sun-searching fingers,
Fingers—or spear-tips, grown tall, will bud at another year’s breaking,
One day when the brooks, manumitted by sunshine, are making
Music like gold in the spring of some far generation.
And up from the long-withered leaves, from the musty stagnation,
Life will climb high to the furthermost leaflets.
The bursting of catkins asunder with greed for the sunlight; the thirsting
Of twisted brown roots for earth-water; the gradual unfolding
Of brilliance and strength in the future, earth’s bosom is holding
Today in those scurrying leaves, soon to be crumpled and broken.
Let those who have ears hear my word and be still. I have spoken.
The Poet
Sunlight was something more than that to him.
It was a halo when it formed a rim
Around some far-off mountain peak. He called
It thin-beat leaf of gold, and stood enthralled
When it lay still on some half-sheltered spot
In gilt mosaics where the trees forgot
To hide the grasses carpeting the spot.
The sky to him was not just the blue sky,
But a deep, painted bowl with clouds piled high;
And when these clouds were tinted burning red,
Or gold and Bacchic purple, then he said:
“The too-full goblets of the gods had over-run,
Nor give the credit to the disappearing sun
Who flames before he leaves the world in dun.”
Between his eyes and life fate seemed to hold
A magic tissue of transparent gold,
That freed his vision from the dull, drab, hopeless part,
And kept alive a fresh, unsaddened heart.
And all unselfishly he tried to share
His gift with us who see the harsh and bare;
Be we refused. We did not know nor care.
GLADYS CARDIFF (1942–), Eastern Band of Cherokee, was born in Browning, Montana, and grew up in Seattle, Washington. Of Irish, Welsh, and Cherokee descent, she is the author of two collections of poetry, To Frighten a Storm (1976) and A Bare Unpainted Table (1999). Cardiff’s honors and awards include a Washington State Governor’s First Book Award for her first book of poetry, two awards from the Seattle Arts Commission, and the University of Washington’s Louisa Kerns Award.
To Frighten a Storm
O now you come in rut,
in rank and black desire,
to beat the brush, to lash
the wind with your long hair.
Ha! I am afraid,
exceedingly afraid.
But see? her path goes there,
along the swaying tops
of trees, up to the hills.
Too long she is alone.
Bypass our fields, and mount
your ravages of fire
and rain on higher trails.
You shall have her lying down
upon the smoking mountains.
Combing
Bending, I bow my head
and lay my hands upon
her hair, combing, and think
how women do this for
each other. My daughter’s hair
curls against the comb,
wet and fragrant—orange
parings. Her face, downcast,
is quiet for one so young.
I take her place. Beneath
my mother’s hands I feel
the braids drawn up tight
as piano wires and singing,
vinegar-rinsed. Sitting
before the oven I hear
the orange coils tick
the early hour before school.
She combed her grandmother
Mathilda’s hair using
a comb made out of bone.
Mathilda rocked her oak wood
chair, her face downcast,
intent on tearing rags
in strips to braid a cotton
rug from bits of orange
and brown. A simple act
preparing hair. Something
women do for each other,
plaiting the generations.
LINDA HOGAN (1947–), Chickasaw. Born in Denver, Colorado, Hogan has authored nine collections of poetry and seven collections of prose, as well as edited two anthologies. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation for her fiction and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Literature. Her awards include an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, a Lannan Literary Award, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas, and the PEN Thoreau Prize.
Landing
It is the day of leaving
when spiderlings
in orders of magnitude
hatch and from inward silk
unfurl toward a new god
caught by the wind.
I walk by the silk curtain
of strands that came from a body.
It is a shining world.
I want to unravel
something from the belly of myself.
It would not be about the spider who crossed water
and brought fire back to my people,
or even the length and brightness of our river
shining like silk in the light of sun and moonlight,
but about the cave up there in the high mountains
with animals made of willow twigs.
They were there before us,
tied with the string of our grasses
as if they were saying, we are one of you, the future,
and then those first ones came down on ropes of animal hair.
They have always been the far travelers
coming down from above.
That’s why our fields are full of hope
and what is a story but this,
silk, the ancestors landing
and traveling who knows where
but s
ometimes they take your arm
and, caught on a soft wind, you follow.
Blessings
Blessed
are the injured animals
for they live in his cages.
But who will heal my father,
tape his old legs for him?
Here’s the bird with the two broken wings
and her feathers are white as an angel
and she says goddamn stirring grains
in the kitchen. When the birds fly out
he leaves the cages open
and she kisses his brow for such
good works.
Work he says
all your life
and in the end
you don’t even own a piece of land.
Blessed are the rich
for they eat meat every night.
They have already inherited the earth.
For the rest of us, may we just live
long enough
and unwrinkle our brows,
may we keep our good looks
and some of our teeth
and our bowels regular.
Perhaps we can go live places
a rich man can’t inhabit,
in the sunfish and jackrabbits,
in the cinnamon colored soil,
the land of red grass
and red people
in the valley
of the shadow of Elk
who aren’t there.
He says the damned earth is so old
and wobbles so hard
you’d best hang on to everything.
Your neighbors steal what little you got.
Blessed
are the rich
for they don’t have the same old
Everyday to put up with
like my father
who’s gotten old,
Chickasaw
chikkih asachi, which means
they left as a tribe not a very great while ago.
They are always leaving,
those people.
Blessed
are those who listen
when no one is left to speak.
The History of Fire
My mother is a fire beneath stone.
My father, lava.
My grandmother is a match,
my sister straw.
