My lands are where my dead lie buried.
~Crazy Horse

*

That last lowland summer sticks to my skin,
its sun too brilliant and its sky emaciated.
I thought then that no power on earth
could save me from the same starvation.

*

At the airport the blue-uniformed guards
asked too many questions,
leapt for my hands – for my hair –
the knives with which I unbound my cry:
Noli me tangere. And no one did, and
I came back to the southwest,
to the lands where my blood lay buried.

*
*
*

Before the day was done
I walked up to the Cross, there to learn
that he whom I meant to make immortal
had lately gone to God.

*
*
*

When you come back to climb the canyons with me,
I will bake braided bread again
and untether myself from the fifteenth century.

*

We were possessed of the best intentions
but we were nouveau riche
and like barbarians we let love and wine
flow through our fingers.

*

Dust settles down
on those years of greatness and megalomania.
Now neither will the earth shake
nor the heavens fall.