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

God's drum, and other cycles from Indian lore

Chapter 37: THE MUMMY (Estes Park)
By Hartley Burr Alexander
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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 MUMMY (Estes Park)

In the time of the First Race,
In the time of the Giants,
In the time of the Earth-Shapers,——
Their axes were flakes of cliffs,
Their mallets were the knobs of mountains,
The great rocks roared with the sound of their handiwork,——
He was a Chieftain among them,
He was their First Counsellor,
He was the Master Builder when they upreared mighty hills and clave the deep valleys....
For the place of his Mummy they hewed the crested Earth,
For the sarcophagus of his Mummy they established a Mountain,
In the days when his work was completed, he, the First Counsellor!
Above the changing clouds they raised him high;
They set his face to the eternal blue;
His eyes they set to the westering Sun....
What is it that thou dost behold, O Chieftain of the Earth-Shapers?
What is it that thou dost look upon within the mirror of the skies?
With thy stony eyes, what is it that thou dost see—forever?
Men are, and they are not;
Tribes are, and they are not;
Nations are, and they are not,——
Beyond the cycles of the years,
Beyond the portals of time,
What is it that thou dost behold, with stony eyes, with unchanging heart?
Immutable, thou gazest into the blue——
Maker to Maker!
Imperturbable, thou facest the westering Sun——
Chieftain to Chieftain!