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

God's drum, and other cycles from Indian lore

Chapter 23: THE TRAIL
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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 TRAIL

Very pleasant are the prairies, oh!
Wide is the trail of many buffalo;
Here it was our fathers wandered through the moons of long ago,
Following on the trails that lead to and fro....
Very pleasant are the grassy prairies, oh!
Following on the trail of many buffalo....
Ah, where went our elders, thither all must go.