Ode To the Ghost Dancers
Lakota, Arapaho
Cheyenne, Oglala
Minneconjou
Where are they now?
Why is there so much dust
Over a fillet of memory?
The smoke fires are dead
And the discords of our life
We write as history.
It is significant still
The shallow content
In which we drown for glory
It is I
Remnant of a forgotten tear
That must tell
The similitude of a coordinated hell.
Despair is a state of mind
A featherlessness
Of warriors wings ... a moan
Leaking from a drum
On deserted prairie afternoon
I watched the ghost dancers
Cried with their feet,
And never saw a thing more desolate.
These men freed from the bondage of their souls
Came slow circle
Through the trance of disbelief
Lingered in the music of drums
Retired from the melody of their hearts
O how they danced
The ghost dancers deserted by their magic
They danced
For the return of the buffaloes
They danced
Invoking the prairie grass to gallop
From the horses feet
Bowing only to the mastery of the wind
Like fodder bows to fire and change
And the black cloud stood stagnant
Lethargic in the emptiness
For from the black breast came
No white milk to put out the fire of shame
Before the women and children vacant eyes
They danced for the land
That had aborted their dreams
And corralled them
In the tragedy at wounded knee
I don't care how we limp from it
Regrets are only the arthritis of desire
The buzzards roof the certainty of the eye
The heat is white here like a bone
Beneath the grinching grass
The hoof beat dies
And the ghost dancers caper
In an agony beyond reconciliation.
Copyright © L'Nass Shango | Year Posted 2010
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