Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TEWA VICTORIES, by CLARENCE MAJOR



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TEWA VICTORIES, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: The town chief fasting for rain


The Town Chief fasting for rain,
a procession of singers walking
from the desert back up
to the mesa
with the little wooden man:
Saint Augustine;
a lone man carrying a cross
slowly,
down from the mesa to the desert;
another planting prayer sticks;
one cocking a rifle,
one a sack on his back --
going out to plant seed
and chewing the root ballafia...

and the condor comes
down with a lightness
on the roadside, hops to the body
of the dead skunk.
Something whispers from the crevice
in the sandstone
five miles up the canyon.

So the story begins
without a story intended.
He now fed a clown piki.
He imitated a woman sweeping
a path
for the Mapuride; he broke all
the rules when he helped the women
make mudcakes and wrap them
in cornshucks.
He himself was the Mapurnin.
He handed medicine to the mayor.
He expressed with hands
and face the agony
of misunderstanding between
a reservation cop
and a personator of a kachina.

The laughter was sincere
when he wiggled like Chu,
the Snake Kachina.

He shook a yellow gourd
and kept step
in the circular Christmas dance.
In January he joined the Laguna dance,
wore the evergreen
branches around his hips but
the execution
of the eagle
the day after Home Dance
gave him guilt
he scrubbed furiously
like a dirty hand.

The mayor speaking Tusayan
congratulated him on the room
he added to the house
his ma and pa still shared.

He gathered berries
and passed them around.
The people were tiny, stiff,
and grateful.

One year he was Kapyo
coming up
out of the roundhouse kiva,
throwing a spear at a deer, then
he went out and brought the evergreens
back on his back.

His father weaved the blankets,
his mother made the clay pots.

He danced himself crazy
in the Pinitu fertility parade!
When the woman came
and asked to be whipped,
the mayor chose him to take up the whip.
She was sure his beating
would drive out her demon.

He decorated the Kekei Virken.

He kept us in stitches
when he became a coyote
trying to chew
a prayer stick
from the ground.

He ate a natoai
with more dignity
than any other Hopi.
In the foot races
he ran faster than roadrunner.

He got his friends to help him
plant thlawashie
in the Painted Desert -- to make
an altar of stones
where the spirits
could live.
On All Soul's Day
he went with his old ma
to the graves where she dug
a hole
at the head of her father's
and placed in it
a few bread crumbs.

He broke a bowl on his knee;
left it on his grandfather's
grave.
Then back up to the mesa.

He made a circle of candles
stand
around a bowl of corn.
Slowly, he lighted them,
slowly.

He was chosen to take the sack
of corn down into the kiva
of the War Society.
He did it well.

Without touching his knees
to the ground
he buried an ear of corn
in gratitude
to Great Mother Earth.

They all said his Shichu
dancing
tore roughly at the wind
and that was very,
very
good -- better than his coming
up
out of the earth,
all alone, as Haukabede,
with such an innocent,
decayed white face.

He spoke the words
of the hakuwam
as though it were a cluster
of hanging yellow flowers!

As Black Eyes
he did a two-kiva strut!
As Red Eyes
he disowned the taffeta
a girl pressed into his hand.
When he was too old to play
Aiyayaode,
he taught his son
(except the part where
your cock is supposed to leap out --
innocently bouncing
from one thigh to the other).
He liked his son best
as a Thliwa dancer.
On the first deer hunt
his son took,
he taught the boy how to chew
a piece of venison and suck
in the breath of the dead deer.
He was the Hunt Chief.
He carried a wolf fetish,
and dreamed all day
of rabbit stew.

As the Clown, he carried the willow
limb,
red as Red Eyes' eyes, running
holding up his yellow limb.

He taught his son
how to use the figurines
in his wolf pouch; to smoke
out the rabbits hiding
in the desert brush;
to throw the koa
at the fleeing rabbit.

All his life all was well
till his wife died
and he could not find another
young one.
When he went to an old one
for her yes
she told him what was best.


Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA
98368-0271, www.cc.press.org




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