The Death of Sitting Bear: New and Selected Poems

by N. Scott Momaday

for the villagers stories as old as the earth tell the human heart

in the beginning the sound of the spoken word the roll of thunder

The words “sacrifice” and “sacred” are related. The children whose sacrifice is marked by rows of gravestones in the Carlisle Indian School cemetery were and are, in their innocence and martyrdom, sacred beings. I have come to Carlisle to observe the one hundredth anniversary of the closing of the Indian School. Some of the descendents of the students have come as well, and I count myself among them. The town and countryside are becoming rich with color. There is already a bountiful harvest of pumpkins, and nearby, the Indian river Susquehanna courses along walls of green boughs blushing. There are ghosts. The lost children are like leaves whirling slowly on the bright water. They dip and enter into the mist of time. They are no longer visible, but they are there. They touch the face of eternity.

Ultimus When I have reckoned time and space And broken from the world’s embrace, Remember what was good in me And see beyond my frailty. In all my days I did mean well. Remember not how short I fell.

On the Stair Too often has it been too late. I risk my soul and contemplate The instant that is lately dead. I reckon what I might have said Had I been quicker in my brain And given words to weave again. But you are gone, and I am left To find my tongue at last, bereft. On these dark steps my wit is keen. Imagine what I meant to mean.

There Came a Ghost There came a ghost in the night, Having about it a translucent Cast, a pale radiance of wonder. Indeed it was illumined within As by the moon. It spoke to me In a language I did not know But quite understood. It told me That it had once been immediate In my world and that it had seen Me walking hand in hand with A presence bright and beautiful And illumined as by the moon. The ghost took my hand, and We walked by the sea which was Illumined by the moon. After A time I realized that the hand In mine was the hand of a child And mine the tracks in the sand.

La tierra del encanto Clouds build on the northern ridge Where the shades of night grow pale And there comes a rain like smoke. The mountains loom and recede. And Below, the umber plain is a pitted hide. There the distance of time runs out, And the mind extends beyond itself. I have seen in the twist of wind The landscape severed and heard The edged cries of streaming hawks. First light is a tapestry on canyon walls, And shadows are pools of illusion. I am a man of the ancient earth For I have known the desert at dawn.

Then, as the sky faded, there appeared in the foreground a window through which the light of a candle glowed. It was nearly ineffable in its rustic warmth and dignity. It was a barely visible icon to grace the invisible spirit.

The Pilgrims They go, and nothing succeeds them. In the long distance they disappear, and where they were there is only vacancy, the distillation of loss. In memoriam they walk to no destiny. Theirs is the burden of pilgrimage. Their crooked file is etched on planes of ice, a trace ascending beyond time.