Classic Poem

" Once only Indians lived in this land. Then came strangers from across the Great Water. . . . The strangers have become many and they fill the country. They dig gold from my mountains; they build cities of my stones and rocks; they make fine clothes from the hides and fur of animals that eat my grass. None of the things that make their riches did they bring with them from across the water; all belongs to my land, the land the Great Mystery gave to the Indian. "
H IAMOVI , High Chief of the Cheyennes and Dakotas.
The poets are returning to America. They are looking homeward,
From the distant places across seas, from the distant places within the mind.
They are rediscovering her, with strength unspent, energies unchronicled.
They are looking clearly, with new eyes, searching what they can find.

And this is a good thing for us to see in our day; it is healthy.
Where should a plant find sap for its roots, be nourished, if not from its own soil?
The spring is on them, it is rising, it is cool and sweet in the tight tendrils;
It is coming surely now into flower, it will not wither or spoil.

Strange the long drought, the barren days, the land wasting
For want of one strong cloud that could condense into rain
And wet the earth. Flowers bloomed unscented, fruit untasting.
This shall not happen again.

Now the young men, homesick on Montparnasse, in the beautiful French forests,
On Spanish sands, turn a remembering eye and write out of their blood
Of wars their fathers fought, or the shape of their farmland along the Ohio.
They see the evening light over Ontario, hear the Chattahoochie in flood.

This is right. There are poems here to be spoken;
There are voices that will not be stilled.
Put the words together though the rhythm halts and is broken,
The need shall be filled.

Yet for all your young life, your hungry vigor, your freshly aroused devotion,
There are great poems here that you will not find, that will never be written or said.
Long ago we silenced the voices, thrust earth into the throats, let a conqueror's oppression
Stamp out the living spark of the mind, as time destroys flesh that is dead.

Remember we do not belong here. We came from another country,
Though our forefathers braved the sea in small ships, faced the ominous shore,
Sunk deep roots, hewed the woods, bled into the earth, planted their new traditions
In the sand of the south and against the north rocks where the bleak seas roar.

They fought the sharp battles, made peace and treaties, and broke them,
Pressed into the furthermost land with courage and a desperate zeal.
This sprawling civilization is ours now, from the height of its smoke stacks
To the depth of its mines. Our life is the roar of each loom, the turn of each wheel.

Yet as sometimes the old house and grounds of a long dispossessed owner
Hold memories that come up like a ghost between us and our word,
So there are voices that spoke here once profound, elemental
No one of us ever heard
There was a race here. O swift Iroquois! O strong-bowed Ojibway!
In fire over Penobscot hills, deep in the Kentucky Trace,
O moccasined feet, you sleep forever in your earth, you fell unbroken,
Losing your heritage and your life together, as befitting a proud race.

And far to the west, across the plains, beyond the great Mississippi,
Were dwellers in the sun, rovers among the hills, living a life apart.
O wise Navajo at your loom, O quick riding Morning-Star Pawnee,
Your years have suffered our deep slow invasion into the heart.

Yours was the first voice of America, the knowledge of its wind, its stillness,
The meaning of Tacoma, the high peak forever covered with snow,
The mystery of red Colorado cutting its way through the Canyon,
The songs of a deep earth rhythm, of a life we shall never know.

You left messages in the earth, but we do not comprehend them.
You were wise not to write your songs, but to teach them from old to young.
Better be lost forever than imitated or grow faint on a bookshelf
When, with the old meaning, they can neither be spoken nor sung.

Yet over the width of this land that was once Indian country,
From the blue Allegheny ridge, to the high peaks where the shadows are long,
Where the dust spirals up from the plains, where the sharp stars are cold in the pine trees,
Beneath the young grass, tuned in the wind, there linger the fragments of song.

And forever there shall come a moment to each American poet,
Who listens with heart and mind to the voices of his land,
When he must be silent, and the breath of his words shall be taken from him
Into a pulse-beaThe cannot understand.