Carter Devard

Coyote Tells Why He Sings


There was a little rill of water, near the den,
that showed a trickle, all the dry summer
When I was born. One night in late August, it rained--
The Thunder waked us. Drops came crashing down
In dust, on stiff blackjack leaves, on lichened rocks,
And the rain came in a pelting rush down over the hill;
Wind blew wet into our cave as I heard the sounds
Of leaf-drip, rustling of soggy branches in gusts of wind.

And then the rill's tune changed-- I heard a rock drop
That set new ripples gurgling, in a lower key.
Where the new ripples were, I drank, next morning,
Fresh muddy water that set my teeth on edge.
I thought how delicate that rock's poise was and how
The storm made music when it changed my world.


- -
do livro How the Songs Come Down, em parte disponível aqui, em .pdf.


- -

A SONG THAT WE STILL SING

On the way from Oklahoma up to the Sun Dance
at Crow Dog’s Paradise on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation,
they’d stopped a few minutes,
my Ponca cousins from Oklahoma–
they were way out there by some kind
of ruins, on the August prairie,
some kind of fort it may
have been, they stopped
to eat a little, get out and
stretch their legs, the van
had got too little for
the kids and all.
And they were walking
not paying much attention and they heard
the singing and then Casey said,
Listen, that’s Ponca singing.
Hear it? Where’s it coming from?
They listened, and Mike said,
Sounds like it’s over
inside those walls or whatever
they may be, over there.
So they walked
through the dry short grass
towards the raised earth walls
and up on them, and looked
inside that wide compound, and there
was not a soul in sight.

That was a Wolf Song, Mike said.
Yes, a Victory Song, Casey said.

When they told me later, we looked and
decided that it was where the Cheyennes
and some of their allies had chased some troopers
inside a fort and
taunted them–
after Sand Creek it was,
that time the news got out of what
had been done to Black Kettle and
his people there beneath
that big American flag which they’d been given
in token that this peaceful band
was not to be attacked,
and then at dawn the Reverend Colonel
Chivington and his men attacked and massacred
some hundreds who could not escape–
one small boy, running
for refuge, was shot down at a hundred yards,
because, as Chivington had told his troops,
Nits make lice. The women’s breasts,
sliced off, were made into
tobacco pouches, as were the scrotums
of men. George Bent, a half-Cheyenne who was there,
who’d been a Confederate soldier and
both wrote and spoke English and Cheyenne,
has told about it in his letters–
he saw White Antelope come out
unarmed from his tepee, pointing up
at Old Glory waving over the village there,
then when the troopers kept on shooting,
he stood unmoved and sang, as they shot him down,
the death-song he’d composed for such a time:

Nothing lives long
except the earth and the mountains.

So I asked Casey and Mike,
what do you think you heard, inside that place?
–I guess, Mike said, up in Nebraska
there must have been some Poncas
who joined the Cheyennes there and fought
the soldiers till they chased them
into that fort.
Then Casey said,
We recognized that song. It’s one
that we still sing.


também de Carter Devard, numa viagem passa pelo 'Sand Creek Massacre', que vi há poucos dias em Soldier Blue. a palavra-arte como memória e cura.