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

God's drum, and other cycles from Indian lore

Chapter 8: BIRDS AND FROGS
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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.

BIRDS AND FROGS

The birds that sing in the morning,
Them I can understand:
They call to one another proudly;
Proudly they descant their songs;
Proudly they look about, eager for response.
But the frogs that sing when it is evening;
I cannot understand them:
They sing all at once, each one attentive to himself;
They stop all at once, none gives an answer;
The frogs have voices, they have not ears.
Some men are like the birds;
Some women are like the frogs.