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

God's drum, and other cycles from Indian lore

Chapter 29: A LOCK OF HAIR
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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.

A LOCK OF HAIR

It is only crying about myself
that comes to me in song,
It is only tears....
When the young men go by, happy,
When the young girls go by, happy,
I seem to see someone with them....
How lifelike is a lock of hair
when all the body is decayed!