The golden whales of California, and other rhymes in the American language

Chapter 65: II—WRITTEN IN A YEAR WHEN MANY OF MY PEOPLE DIED

Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

The collection gathers lyrical and narrative poems that range from long, scene-setting pieces celebrating California's landscapes and the new art of the moving picture to playful rhymed scenarios and verse games. It interleaves meditations on history, myth, science, and religion with comic sketches and dialectal songs, moves into wartime reflections and elegies for fallen poets, and closes with local, Midwestern vignettes and personal tributes. The poet shifts between high-lyric description, satirical invective, and vernacular rhythms, experimenting with form and voice to present an uneven but energetic portrait of American life, technology, and regional identity in early twentieth-century verse.

II—WRITTEN IN A YEAR WHEN MANY OF MY PEOPLE DIED

I have begun to count my dead.

They wave green branches

Around my head,

Put their hands upon my shoulders,

Stand behind me,

Fly above me—

Presences that love me.

They watch me daily,

Murmuring, gravely, gaily,

Praising, reproving, readily.

And every year that company

Grows the greater, steadily.

And every day I count my dead

In robes of sunrise, blue and red.