Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,
Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,
A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea
Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries
Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes
Ebon in the hedges, fat
With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers.
I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me.
They accommodate themselves to my milkbottle, flattening their sides.

Overhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks—
Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.
Theirs is the only voice, protesting, protesting.
I do not think the sea will appear at all.
The high, green meadows are glowing, as if lit from within.
I come to one bush of berries so ripe it is a bush of flies,
Hanging their bluegreen bellies and their wing panes in a Chinese screen.
The honey-feast of the berries has stunned them; they believe in heaven.
One more hook, and the berries and bushes end.

The only thing to come now is the sea.
From between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me,
Slapping its phantom laundry in my face.
These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.
I follow the sheep path between them. A last hook brings me
To the hills’ northern face, and the face is orange rock
That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space
Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths
Beating and beating at an intractable metal.

I
Weed, moss-weed,
root tangled in sand,
sea-iris, brittle flower,
one petal like a shell
is broken,
and you print a shadow
like a thin twig.

Fortunate one,
scented and stinging,
rigid myrrh-bud,
camphor-flower,
sweet and salt—you are wind
in our nostrils.

II

Do the murex-fishers
drench you as they pass?
Do your roots drag up colour
from the sand?
Have they slipped gold under you—
rivets of gold?

Band of iris-flowers
above the waves,
you are painted blue,
painted like a fresh prow
stained among the salt weeds.

Often visitors there, saddened
by lack of trees, go out
to a promontory.

Then, backed by the banded
sunset, the trail
of the Conquistadores,

the father puts on the camera,
the leather albatross,
and has the children

imitate saguaros. One
at a time they stand there smiling,
fingers up like the tines of a fork

while the stately saguaro
goes on being entered
by wrens, diseases, and sunlight.

The mother sits on a rock,
arms folded
across her breasts. To her

the cactus looks scared,
its needles
like hair in cartoons.

With its arms in preacher
or waltz position,
it gives the impression

of great effort
in every direction,
like the mother.

Thousands of these gray-green
cacti cross the valley:
nature repeating itself,

children repeating nature,
father repeating children
and mother watching.

Later, the children think
the cactus was moral,
had something to teach them,

some survival technique
or just regular beauty.
But what else could it do?

The only protection
against death
was to love solitude.

My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself
—Ezekiel

And into the heavens, as on a bright day after rain,
there came the shapes of four creatures,
and they each had the likeness of a man,
and each man had four wings outstretched
and each wing had four eyes emblazoned, wide open,
given to weeping at the worlds they contained:

an eye-world of light, of fire and air,
of water and its mirror, heart and its first fear;
and in each world were four names,
entangled in its forest of letters,
whereupon I could read: Dow Jones, Cargill,
Chevron, and DeKalb of the frozen seed,
bearing but once and giving up its need;

and under each name were discovered four meanings,
literal, figurative, rational, dim,
and under each meaning a counter-meaning,
with its likeness of Freud, Marx, Hegel, and Lacan;
and the four figures passed as one overhead,
their wingtips linked like molten silver joined.

For I, Ezekiel, had been given to eat
the very substance of God,
and my eyes were open and my mouth spake,
as spring opens winter and winter closes fall;
and the earth turned rightly, to my senses sweet.
Son of man, they called me, a proverb and a sign.

Say: I am a sign of the city, the cauldron
where men burn down to desire.
Say: I am the proverb of nothing and one,
boiling over the fire, rising out of belief
and falling, like a tyrant, out of derision alone.

And lo, a likeness, as of the appearance of fire,
the error of presence, of nothing as one,
and lo, another likeness, the appearance of water,
the error of absence, of something as none;
for water surrounds all shapes that enter
but has no shape of its own,
and fire is the shape of ruin alone.

For the princes of the sea
shall cast their garments upon the land’s end:
their scholar’s robes, sharkskin suits,
and alligator shoes, their Nikes,
Reeboks, and Chuvashian mittens
knitted by the children of shepherds,
by tinsmiths and ladies’ men,
in the dark at the back of the store;
for the princes of fire consume what they love,
with the reckless ambition of gods.

Yea, as I spake to dry bones that lay upon the earth,
they danced into being, and chattered, one and one,
down the hallways of my desert, the thresholds of my river.
For the Lord builds ruined palaces and plants desolation,
he receives what is absent; possesses all that is gone.

Where does such tenderness come from?
These aren’t the first curls
I’ve wound around my finger—
I’ve kissed lips darker than yours.

The sky is washed and dark
(Where does such tenderness come from?)
Other eyes have known
and shifted away from my eyes.

But I’ve never heard words like this
in the night
(Where does such tenderness come from?)
with my head on your chest, rest.

Where does this tenderness come from?
And what will I do with it? Young
stranger, poet, wandering through town,
you and your eyelashes—longer than anyone’s.

We aged a hundred years and this descended
In just one hour, as at a stroke.
The summer had been brief and now was ended;
The body of the ploughed plains lay in smoke.

The hushed road burst in colors then, a soaring
Lament rose, ringing silver like a bell.
And so I covered up my face, imploring
God to destroy me before battle fell.

And from my memory the shadows vanished
Of songs and passions—burdens I’d not need.
The Almighty bade it be—with all else banished—
A book of portents terrible to read.

You have dragged me on through the wild wood ways,
You have given me toil and scanty rest,
I have seen the light of ten thousand days
Grow dim and sink and fade in the West.

Once you bore me forth from the dusty gloom,
Weeping and helpless and naked and blind,
Now you would hide me deep down in the tomb,
And wander away on the moonlit wind.

You would bury me like a thing of shame,
Silently into the darkness thrust,
You would mix my heart that was once a flame
With the mouldering clay and the wandering dust.

The eyes that wept for your sorrowful will
Shall be laid among evil and unclean things,
The heart that was faithful through good and ill
You scorn for a flutter of tawdry wings.

You were the moonlight, I lived in the sun;
Could there ever be peace between us twain?
I sought the Many, you seek the One,
You are the slayer, I am the slain.

Oh soul, when you mount to your flame-built throne
Will you dream no dream of the broken clay?
Will you breathe o’er the stars in your pathway strown,
No sigh for the daisies of yesterday?

As you wander the shining corridors,
A lonely wave in the ocean of light,
Have you never a thought of the lake’s lost shores,
Or the fire-lit cottage dim and white?

Shall not the dear smell of the rain-wet soil
Through the windless spheres and the silence float?
Shall not my hands that are brown with toil
Take your dreams and high desires by the throat?

Behold, I reach forth from beyond the years,
I will cry to you from beneath the sod,
I will drag you back from the starry spheres,
Yea, down from the very bosom of God.

You cannot hide from the sun and the wind,
Or the whispered song of the April rain,
The proud earth that moulds all things to her mind,
Shall gather you out of the deeps again.

You shall follow once more a wandering fire,
You shall gaze again on the starlit sea,
You shall gather roses out of the mire:
Alas, but you shall not remember me.

I want to show you these rose clouds in the night.
But you can’t see. It’s night—what can one see?

Now, I have no choice but to see with your eyes,
he said,
so I’m not alone, so you’re not alone. And really,
there’s nothing over there where I pointed.

Only the stars crowded together in the night,
tired,
like those people coming back in a truck from
a picnic,
disappointed, hungry, nobody singing,
with wilted wildflowers in their sweaty palms.

But I’m going to insist on seeing and showing
you, he said,
because if you too don’t see, it will be as if I
hadn’t —
I’ll insist at least on not seeing with your eyes —
and maybe someday, from a different direction,
we’ll meet.

“The conquest is not sustainable …”
—Winona LaDuke

thanks for bringing that
to our attention
she said the first time
to my response to a history text
about a famous painting
of the Battle of Quebec
that never mentioned the French
and only mentioned Indians twice,
once as nuisances, once
as the noble savage
kneeling by the dying
English general

this was during
the French and Indian war
I said, soon thousands
of French and Indian people
would be displaced, sold
into indentured servitude
my own family among them
there would be bounties
on the heads of Abenaki people
in Maine, and the English
would sow the fields of the Mohawks
with salt

thanks for bringing that up,
she said

the next book mentioned
cannibals in the Caribbean,
Indians who believed the Spanish were
gods, Indians killing themselves, Indian
women in love with Spanish pricks, Indians
whose names, even when known, were
passed over in favor of the ones
given them by the Spanish

stop writing about
Indians
she told me
you’re making everyone
feel guilty

but the next book
was back in Maine
home territory
the diary of a midwife
right after that same
French and Indian war
and she was using herbs
not found in English herbals
and wrote that a “young
squaw” visited her
over a period of
three weeks, but

the famous historian
said only that
there may have been
Indians in the area,
while she wrote
at length about
white men dressing up
as Indians
to protest against the rich
stealing their lands

stop writing about Indians
she told me again
only louder as if
I was hard of hearing
you have to allow authors
their subjects, she said
stop writing about
what isn’t in the text

which is just our entire history

this week, she said
I’m really upset
you’re telling the same story
three times
because there’s only
one story about Indians
and we all know what it is
so I asked her if there are an
infinite number of stories about
white people
and she told me to
stop being racist

so I stayed away from class for a week
because they were reading a book
about a mystery in the Everglades
and I knew there had to be
Indians in that swamp
and I didn’t want to have to
write about Indians
again

it was on to the next book
written, she said by
a Cherokee writer,
which Leslie Silko, who is Laguna,
will be interested to find out
because the book was Ceremony
but that is a small mistake
sort of like saying that
Dante is Chinese, so
I overlooked it

now, she told me
write about Indians

and I might have done that
except she went on
about Indians putting on
a mask of whiteness
like white people put on
black face, and some of the students
wrote it down in their notebooks
and everyone started talking about
minstrel shows

then she wanted me to tell her
if there is such a thing as
an Indian world view
and I said, well, yes and no,
which I figured was safe
since I would be at least
half-right whichever answer
she wanted, but when I mentioned
the European world view,
she said there isn’t any such thing
which was quite a relief to me,
I hate to think there were a
whole lot of people thinking in
hierarchies and as if the
earth is a dead object and
animals and plants and some people
not having spirit
then she said I’d better stick
to what I know, that is,
Indians, which is what
I was trying to do in the first place,
and that maybe European philosophy
was too much for my primitive
brain in spite of its being my
undergraduate major
and I pointed out that the
oppressed always know more
about the oppressor than vice
versa, so she just glared at me
and told me that I look
Scandinavian

which was a surprise to me
and I wondered why I never was a
prom queen since it was always the
Scandinavian girls who got that
honor, maybe they never
noticed I was one of them. Exactly
how much Indian are you anyway?
she asked. I told her I guessed
I was pretty much Indian. I
suppose she wondered
why I wouldn’t accept that mask of
whiteness she kept talking about
as myself

Ah, ah cries the crow arching toward the heavy sky over the marina.
Lands on the crown of the palm tree.

Ah, ah slaps the urgent cove of ocean swimming through the slips.
We carry canoes to the edge of the salt.

Ah, ah groans the crew with the weight, the winds cutting skin.
We claim our seats. Pelicans perch in the draft for fish.

Ah, ah beats our lungs and we are racing into the waves.
Though there are worlds below us and above us, we are straight ahead.

Ah, ah tatttoos the engines of your plane against the sky—away from these waters.
Each paddle stroke follows the curve from reach to loss.

Ah, ah calls the sun from a fishing boat with a pale, yellow sail. We fly by
on our return, over the net of eternity thrown out for stars.

Ah, ah scrapes the hull of my soul. Ah, ah.

There was the method of kneeling,
a fine method, if you lived in a country
where stones were smooth.
The women dreamed wistfully of bleached courtyards,
hidden corners where knee fit rock.
Their prayers were weathered rib bones,
small calcium words uttered in sequence,
as if this shedding of syllables could somehow
fuse them to the sky.

There were the men who had been shepherds so long
they walked like sheep.
Under the olive trees, they raised their arms—
Hear us! We have pain on earth!
We have so much pain there is no place to store it!
But the olives bobbed peacefully
in fragrant buckets of vinegar and thyme.
At night the men ate heartily, flat bread and white cheese,
and were happy in spite of the pain,
because there was also happiness.

Some prized the pilgrimage,
wrapping themselves in new white linen
to ride buses across miles of vacant sand.
When they arrived at Mecca
they would circle the holy places,
on foot, many times,
they would bend to kiss the earth
and return, their lean faces housing mystery.

While for certain cousins and grandmothers
the pilgrimage occurred daily,
lugging water from the spring
or balancing the baskets of grapes.
These were the ones present at births,
humming quietly to perspiring mothers.
The ones stitching intricate needlework into children’s dresses,
forgetting how easily children soil clothes.

There were those who didn’t care about praying.
The young ones. The ones who had been to America.
They told the old ones, you are wasting your time.
Time?—The old ones prayed for the young ones.
They prayed for Allah to mend their brains,
for the twig, the round moon,
to speak suddenly in a commanding tone.

And occasionally there would be one
who did none of this,
the old man Fowzi, for example, Fowzi the fool,
who beat everyone at dominoes,
insisted he spoke with God as he spoke with goats,
and was famous for his laugh.

A magic day — sunshine and frost —
but you, in dreamland are lost…
Come, open your enchanting eyes
with honeyed indolence replete…
Star of the North, arise to meet
Aurora in her wintry skies.

That blizzard yesternight! It spread
dimness and tumult overhead.
The moon through a lugubrious veil
was but a blur of jaundiced gray,
and you were listless…But to-day —
well, let the window tell its tale:

Fabulous carpets of rich snow
under the cloudless heavens glow.
Alone the gauzy birches seem
to show some black, while green occurs
among the frost-bespangled firs,
and blue-shot ice adorns the stream.

The room is flooded with a light
like amber, and with all its might
the hot stove crackles. Lolling there
in meditation is no doubt enjoyable…but what about
a sledge behind the chestnut mare?

Sweet friend, together we shall speed
yielding to our impatient steed
on new-born whiteness, fleet and free,
and visit silent fields of snow,
woods that were lush two months ago
a lakeshore that is dear to me…

I cried when the moon was murmuring to the birds,
‘Let peewit call and curlew cry where they will,
I long for your merry and tender and pitiful words,
For the roads are unending and there is no place to my mind.’
The honey-pale Moon lay low on the sleepy hill
And I fell asleep upon lonely Echtge of streams;
No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind,
The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.

I know of the leafy paths that the witches take,
Who come with their crowns of pearl and their spindles of wool, p. 22
And their secret smile, out of the depths of the lake;
And of apple islands where the Danaan kind
Wind and unwind their dances when the light grows cool
On the island lawns, their feet where the pale foam gleams;
No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind,
The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.

I know of the sleepy country, where swans fly round
Coupled with golden chains and sing as they fly,
A king and a queen are wandering there, and the sound
Has made them so happy and hopeless, so deaf and so blind
With wisdom, they wander till all the years have gone by;
I know, and the curlew and peewit on Echtge of streams;
No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind,
The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.