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

God's drum, and other cycles from Indian lore

Chapter 16: THE WINDS
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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.

THE WINDS

The wind is coming to me,
Coming to me with coolness,
Coming to me with fullness,
Breathing upon me——
The Spirit Wind.
Fanned onward by wings cloud-feathered,
Soft with white snow, gray with misty rain,
Fragrant and freshening, come the winds——
The Spirit Winds.
They breathe upon my body,
They lave me in their coolness,
With their fullness they obliterate me....
Death, too, is a Spirit;
Death, too, is a Wind.