by Winifred Rawlins
This is a song for all those children of the earth
Who have been joyful and vulnerable,
and so were overcome
By the industrious and the well-armed;
living in communities
Open to the stars and the winds of night
And worshiping the lightning in its terrible pathway
Through the summer silences, offering to the sun
Their entranced victims like freshly-plucked flowers
Carelessly scattered; whose lovely pavilions,
Rising above deep lakes or high among the clouds
On a mountain plateau, fell before the onslaught
Of purposeful battalions.
They lived in mounds of the earth,
Carefully fashioned, like a turtle shell,
the stuff of their own dust
To shelter beneath; they made themselves huts of grass
And of woven branches, so that it seemed the trees
Came down to earth; they borrowed the colors of flowers
And wore them like robes,
and decked their bodies with feathers
Laced in intricate patterns, so that they moved
Like a bright rush of birds in perpetual flight.
They were cruel and joyful, simple and full of guile
In the dark motions of the blood,
though they had not yet learned
Hardness of the heart and the long calculations
Of the covetous eye.
So they were always conquered,
Though not without bitter treachery,
for they loved their earth.
They saw their gods tumble from the sky,
and in their places
Rise strange cold edifices shutting out the sun.
They were outschemed and overcome,
and yet were not broken,
Being vital and yielding, like saplings in a storm;
They prostrated themselves before the alien altars
Hoping for deliverance from their trouble,
yet in the darkness
Still whispered the old names, still read the old omens
In the comforting sky, and were themselves for ever.
This is their song, the children of the earth
Who have been joyful and vulnerable,
and so were overcome
By the industrious and the well-armed,
and their earth taken from them.
from Dreaming Is Now, published by Golden Quill Press.
(c) 1963, All right reserved.