Classic Poem

Here in Kansas is a school
Made of square stones and windows,
Where Indian boys are taught to use a tool,
A printing-press, a book,
And Indian girls
To read, to dress, to cook,
And as I watch today
The orderly industrious classes,
Only their color and silence and the way
The hair lies flat and black on their heads proclaims them Sioux,
Comanche, Choctaw, Cherokee,
Creek, Chippewa, Paiute—and the red and blue
Of the girls' long sweaters and the purple and yellow,
And the tawny slant of the machine-made shirts …

Noon—and out they come. And one tall fellow,
Breaking from the others with a glittering yell and crouching slim,
Gives a leap like the leap of Mordkin,
And the sun carves under him
A canyon of glory …
And then it shadows, and he darts,
With head hung, to the dormitory.