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

God's drum, and other cycles from Indian lore

Chapter 40: ESCHATOLOGY
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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.

ESCHATOLOGY

The Sick-Man-of-the-North,
He lies upon a litter;
There are four stars which are four Doctors who carry him;
There are three stars which are three Doctors who follow singing;
About the Star-which-Never-Moves they circle——
So it has been,
So it shall be, while the World lasts.
The Spirit-Star-of-the-South,
He was not so high in the heavens when Life was created;
His station was appointed him,
It was lower in the heavens:
He steals upward,
He steals northward, as the World grows older.
The White-Pathway-of-Souls,
It is like a bow laid athwart the night;
The souls of the departed journey southward over it....
When the Doctors cease their singing,
When the Spirit Star has reached a certain height, stealthily,
Will not He-of-the-North journey as they have journeyed——
Southward?
Then the Star-that-Never-Moves will be seen no more;
Then men will be seen no more.