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

God's drum, and other cycles from Indian lore

Chapter 27: THE BIRD OF WAR
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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 BIRD OF WAR

On mighty pinions flying,
The Bird of War, the Bird of War!
I shout to the skies!
In triumph I shout!...
The hollow sky answers me back....
Men live not forever,
Men battle and die....
Like eagles their souls ascend the hollow sky.

The warriors pass,
The young men pass....
In his place I cannot see him....
In the night I hear him crying,
In the night I hear him pleading....
The spirit stars are rising....

When they dug up my bones they painted them red....
Red was upon my body when I died;
I cannot forget how it was when I died.