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.