Classic and Contemporary Poetry
TEWA VICTORIES, by CLARENCE MAJOR 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 | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE SYNCOPATED CAKEWALK by CLARENCE MAJOR REVELATION AT CAP FERRAT by CLARENCE MAJOR SAND FLESH AND SKY by CLARENCE MAJOR A GUY I KNOW ON 47TH AND COTTAGE by CLARENCE MAJOR AGING TOGETHER by CLARENCE MAJOR AT THE ZOO IN SPAIN by CLARENCE MAJOR ATELIER CEZANNE by CLARENCE MAJOR BALLROOM DARK by CLARENCE MAJOR |
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