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God's drum, and other cycles from Indian lore cover

God's drum, and other cycles from Indian lore

Chapter 10: DAY AND NIGHT
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About This Book

A sequence of poems evokes dawn through dusk, prairie winds and dust, ritual dances and spirit songs, and mythic reckonings framed as a red apocalypse. Later cycles portray terraced Pueblo landscapes, potters, corn maidens, and ruined pueblos, while final pieces invoke Aztec gods and cosmology. The language is lyrical and imagistic, alternating intimate observation of natural life with ceremonially inflected reflections on death, renewal, and the drumlike rhythms of the earth.

DAY AND NIGHT

The Day is a blue Man with a burning heart;
The bright clouds are his feather ornaments;
The dark clouds are his spacious robes;
The whole world is his rich possession,
And the shining birds are the choirs that praise him:
He is the Chieftain of all that live,
And men call him ‘Father’....
The Night is a Woman with a changing heart,
Which sometimes she reveals and sometimes she hides,
And sometimes she sends palely, palely, after the Day;
But her stars she keeps with her, always upon her bosom,
For her stars are her little children that must be carried:
Her stars are the spirits of all that die,
And men call her ‘Mother’....