Native American Poetry
Diane Burns
Sure You Can Ask Me a Personal Question
How do you do?
No, I am not Chinese.
No, not Spanish.
No, I am American Indi-uh, Native American.
No, not from India.
No, not Apache.
No, not Navajo.
No, not Sioux.
No, we are not extinct.
Yes, Indin.
Oh?
So that's where you got those high cheekbones.
Your great grandmother, huh?
An Indian Princess, huh?
Hair down to there?
Let me guess. Cherokee?
Oh, so you've had an Indian friend?
That close?
Oh, so you've had an Indian lover?
That tight?
Oh, so you've had an Indian servant?
That much?
Yeah, it was awful what you guys did to us.
It's real decent of you to apologize.
No, I don't know where you can get peyote.
No, I don't know where you can get Navajo rugs real cheap.
No, I didn't make these. I bought it at Bloomingdale's.
Thank you. I like your hair too.
I don't know if anyone knows whether or not Cher is really Indian.
No, I didn't make it rain tonight.
Yeah. Uh-huh. Spirituality.
Uh-huh. Yeah. Spirituality. Uh-huh. Mother
Earth. Yeah. Uh'huh. Uh'huh. Spirituality.
No, I didn't major in archery.
Yeah, a lot of us drink too much.
Some of us can't drink enough.
This ain't no stoic look.
This is my face.
Sherman Alexie
Translated from the American
after all the drive-in theaters have closed
for winter I'll make camp alone
at THE NORTH CEDAR replay westerns
The Seventh Cavalry riding double formation
endlessly Main Avenue stretches
past The Union Gospel Mission where I keep
a post office box miles away
at my permanent address I'll wrap myself
in old blankets wait for white boys
climbing fences to watch this Indian speak
in subtitles they'll surround me
and when they ask “how”
I'll give them exact directions
Gogisgi (Caroll Arnett)
Song of the Breed
Don't offend
the fullbloods,
don't offend
the whites,
stand there in
the middle
of the god-
damned road
and get hit.
Peace Not War: Public Enemy
oh no
struck by greased lightning
F'd by the same last name, you know what?
China ain't never givin back that gottdamn plane
must got this ol nation trained
on some kennel ration
refrain
the same train
fulla cocaine
froze the brain
have you forgotten
i been thru the first term of rotten
the father, the son
and the holy Bush-it we all in
dont look at me
i aint callin for no assassination
im just sayin who voted for this asshole of the nation
deja Bush
crushed by the head rush
15 years back
when i wrote the first bum rush
saw you salute
to the then
vice prez
who did what Raygun said
and then became prez
himself went for delf
knee deep in his damn self
stuck in a 3 headed bucket
of trilateral Bush-it
sorry ain't no better way of puttin it
no you cannot freestyle this
cause yo ass still ain't free
if fight for yall
and they get me
how many of yall is comin to get me?
none
cause its easier to forget me
ain't that a Bush
son of a Bush is here
all up in your zone
you aint never heard so much soul to the bone
i told y'all when the first Bush was tappin my phone
spy vs spy
can't truss em
as you salute to the Illuminati
take your ass to your 1 millionth party
now here's the pitch
high and inside
certified genocide
ain't that a Bush repeat ain't that a Bush
out of nowhere
headed to the hothouse?
killed 135 at the last count...Texas bounce
cats in the cage
got a ghost of a chance
of comin back
from your whack ass killin machine
son of a Bush ain't that a son of a Bush
cats doin bids
for doin the same Bush shit that you did
serial killer kid uh serial killer kid
Coke its the real thing
used to make you swing
used to be your thing
daddy had you under his wing
bringin kilos to fill up silos
you probably sniffed piles
got inmates in Texas scrubbin tiles
that shit is wild
CIA child
that shit is wild
CIA child
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
The Road not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
1915
Dust of snow
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I have rued.
1920
Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice
1920
Once by the Pacific
The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God's last Put out the light was spoken.
1926
The New York School of Poets (1950s)
John Ashbery (1927- )
Sonnet
Each servant stamps the reader with a look.
After many years he has been brought nothing.
The servant's frown is the reader's patience.
The servant goes to bed.
The patience rumbles on
Musing on the library's lofty holes.
His pain is the servant's alive.
It pushes to the top stain of the wall
Its tree-top's head of excitement:
Baskets, birds, beetles, spools.
The light walls collapse next day.
Traffic is the reader's pictured face.
Dear, be the tree your sleep awaits;
Worms be your words, you not safe from ours.
What is Poetry?
The medieval town, with frieze
Of boy scouts from Nagoya? The snow
That came when we wanted it to snow?
Beautiful images? Trying to avoid
Ideas, as in this poem? But we
Go back to them as to a wife, leaving
The mistress we desire? Now they
Will have to believe it
As we believe it. In school
All the thought got combed out:
What was left was like a field.
Shut your eyes, and you can feel it for miles around.
Now open them on a thin vertical path.
It might give us - what? - some flowers soon?
Paradoxes and Oxymorons
This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level.
Look at it talking to you. You look out a window
Or pretend to fidget. You have it but you don't have it.
You miss it, it misses you. You miss each other.
The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be.
What's a plain level? It is that and other things,
Bringing a system of them into play. Play?
Well, actually, yes, but I consider play to be
A deeper outside thing, a dreamed role-pattern,
As in the division of grace these long August days
Without proof. Open-ended. And before you know it
It gets lost in the steam and chatters of typewriters.
It has been played once more. I think you exist only
To tease me into doing it, on your level, and then you aren't there
Or have adopted a different attitude. And the poem
Has set me softly down beside you. The poem is you.
Frank O'Hara (1926-1966)
Les Ettiquettes Jaunes
I picked up a leaf
today from the sidewalk.
This seems childish.
Leaf! you are so big!
How can you change your
color, then just fall!
As if there were no
such thing as integrity!
You are too relaxed
to answer me. I am too
frightened to insist.
Leaf! don't be neurotic
like the small chameleon.
The Critic
I cannot possibly think of you
other than you are: the assassin
of my orchards. You lurk there
in the shadows, meting out
conversation like Eve's first
confusion between penises and
snakes. Oh be droll, be jolly
and be temperate! Do not
frighten me more than you
have to! I must live forever.
Poem
Instant coffee with slightly sour cream
in it, and a phone call to the beyond
which doesn't seem to be coming any nearer.
“Ah daddy, I wanna stay drunk many days”
on the poetry on a new friend
my life held precariously in the seeing
hands of others, their and my impossibilities.
Is this love, now that the first love
has finally died, where there were no impossibilities?
THOMAS LISLE [1709-1767]
The Power of Music
WHEN ORPHEUS went down to the regions below,
Which men are forbidden to see,
He tuned up his lyre, as old histories show,
To set his Eurydice free.
All hell was astonished a person so wise
Should rashly endanger his life,
And venture so far - but how vast their surprise
When they heard that he came for his wife.
To find out a punishment due to his fault
Old Pluto had puzzled his brain;
But hell had no torment sufficient, he thought,
So he gave him his wife back again.
But pity succeeding found place in his heart,
And, pleased with his playing so well,
He took her again in reward of his art;
Such power hath music in hell!
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
Alone
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then - in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life - was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.
1829
To Zante
Fair isle, that from the fairest of all flowers,
Thy gentlest of gentle names dost take!
How many memories of what radiant hours
At sight of thee and thine at once awake!
How many scenes of what departed bliss!
How many thoughts of what entombed hopes!
How many visions of a maiden that is
No more - no more upon the verdant slopes!
No more! Alas, that magical sad sound
Transforming all! Thy charms shall please no more -
Thy memory no more! Accursed ground
Henceforth I hold thy flower - enameled shore,
O hyacinthine isle! O purple Zante!
“Isola d'oro! Fior di Levante!”
1837
Silence
There are some qualities - some incorporate things,
That have a double life, which thus is made
A type of that twin entity which springs
From matter and light, evinced in solid and shape.
There is a two-fold Silence - sea and shore -
Body and soul. One dwells in lonely places,
Newly with grass o'ergrown; some solemn graces,
Some human memories and tearful lore,
Render him terrorless: his name's “No More.”
He is the corporate Silence: dread him not!
No power hath he of evil in himself,
But should some urgent fate (untimely lot!)
Bring thee to meet his shadow (nameless elf,
That haunteth the lone regions where hath trod
No foot of man,) commend thyself to God!
1840
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
49
I never lost as much but twice,
And that was in the sod.
Twice have I stood a beggar
Before the door of God!
Angels - twice descending
Reimbursed my store -
Burglar! Banker - Father!
I am poor once more!
1858?
125
For each ecstatic instant
We must an anguish pay
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstacy.
For each beloved hour
Sharp pittances of years -
Bitter contested farthings -
And Coffers heaped with Tears!
1859?
301
I reason, Earth is short -
And Anguish - absolute -
And many hurt,
But, what of that?
I reason, we could die -
The best Vitality
Cannot excel Decay,
But, what of that?
I reason, that in Heaven -
Somehow, it will be even -
Some new Equation, given -
But, what of that?
1862?
Emily Dickinson - Dwa razy tylko utraciłam (49)
Dwa razy tylko utraciłam
Aż tyle - wchłonął to grób.
Dwa razy jak żebraczka
Stałam u Bożych wrót!
Anioły - dwakroć zesłane -
Spłaciły mnie - mogłam żyć -
Włamywaczu! Bankierze -
Ojcze! Znów nie mam nic!
Emily Dickinson - Za każdą chwilę ekstazy (125)
Za każdą chwilę ekstazy
Płacimy w udręki momencie -
W myśl chybotliwej proporcji
Upadków i uniesień.
Za każdą godzinę szczęścia -
Wysupływane nieufnie
Miedziaki lat - nędzne grosze
Łez, uciułane w Kufrze!
Emily Dickinson - Wiem - niedługo nas Ziemia (301)
Wiem - niedługo nas Ziemia
Absolutem Cierpienia
Ogłusza i niemia -
Ale co a tego?
Wiem - w końcu jest Agonia -
I moc Życia ogromna
Rozkładu nie pokona -
Ale co z tego?
Wiem - w Niebie to się stanie
Słuszne - będzie nam dane
Jakieś nowe Równanie -
Ale co z tego?