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

God's drum, and other cycles from Indian lore

Chapter 55: THE CORN MAIDENS
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 CORN MAIDENS

(A Pueblo Cycle)

The Chief Singer remembereth the Powers of Life:

Five are the Beings which alone are necessary——
Five are the Great Beings which man must know if he would live.
Whereof the first is the Shining Sun, father of all things illumined with life;
Whereof the second is Earth, Mother of Men;
Whereof the third is Water, who is Elder of All;
And the fourth whereof is Fire, who is Elder of All.
Central is the fifth——
Central are our Brothers and Sisters of the Fields of Corn,
Central are our Brothers and Sisters the Seeds of Growing Things.
Five are the Beings which alone are necessary——
Five are the Beings whereby men live.