Songs of Innocence and Experience
(continued)
Bloody Hand’s Prayer (Iroquois)
He thanked the earth,
his mother;
he thanked the rivers and streams,
his water;
he thanked the sun
his light;
he thanked the corn,
the beans, and the squashes,
his food.
He thanked the wind
for banishing disease;
he thanked the herbs
for supplying his medicine;
he thanked the moon and the stars
for their direction;
he thanked the thunder
for giving him rain;
he thanked the Great Spirit,
who directs all the elements
and in whom is embodied all goodness.
Orenda (Iroquois)
Orenda flows within our veins:
Orenda will aid and strengthen the
hunter;
Orenda will advise and counsel the
speechmaker;
Orenda will lighten the burden of
motherhood;
Orenda will teach all the children
to sing.
Wise Deganwida
– great counselor,
born of the virgin birth –
was endowed with the gift of Orenda.
And Hiawatha,
transforming the minds of the Onondaga
was endowed with the gift of Orenda.
The Great League has cast into the pit
weapons of hatred.
and the magical power of peace
flows in her veins.
The Wasiku’s Religion
(Iroquois)
When the Wasiku
landed on this great island
he brought with him religion.
He fled from the Wasiku
of the eastern isles
and we befriended him.
He asked for a small seat,
and we granted his request;
but in return we were deceived.
Now we have scarcely a place left
to spread our blankets –
and still the Wasiku move us on.
And now that we have little space
to spread our blankets
the Wasiku shares his religion with us.
He tells us of a Holy Book,
and the three gods,
that are all one, in another.
He tells us of the Son of God,
who taught the Wasiku principles
he soon forgot.
And he argues with other Wasiku
over the
substance of these principles,
killing for his version of the truth.
But the men of this great island,
say that we too have religion,
though over it we never quarrel.
Like the Wasiku’s principles,
our religion was given to our forefathers,
who passed it on to their children.
It teaches us to be thankful to nature,
to love one another,
and to be united in body and mind.
Now we move on to new lands
wondering why the Wasiku talks religion
and practices deceit.
The Long March (Cherokees)
This was the trail of tears:
a journey through a dark forest
where branches intertwined
shielding all light,
and where the trees danced together
obstructing our path.
It was as if our world
had been turned
upside down.
He-winds and She-winds
no longer carried away disease
but weakened the burdened travelers;
their waters no longer brought forth fruit
but drowned the tired children
in sickness;
red passion
faded into blue despair
white hope
turned as black as darkest night.
Death captured a multitude
and carried them off;
strong warriors,
frail mothers,
the old and the young.
No sun shone
during our journey into night;
the sky was overcast
and the dark clouds
kept the gods from view.
Consummation?
At
a soul was consumed,
and deep in the ground
lies history,
there to be exhumed.
That soul was not the Indian’s
– this may continue to thrive –
that soul belonged to modern man
who committed suicide.
A nation in maturity
was slaughtered
by a nation in its infancy;
and maturity was sliced into pieces
and boiled inside an abstraction,
the steaming melting pot.
And yet, at
the bodies of the victims
remain at rest.
Only the murderers
have left the field
to search despairingly
for their mislaid souls.
At
a soul was consumed
and deep in the ground
lies history,
there to be exhumed.
The Dreamers (Nez Perce)
Can a man part with his head?
Can a man part with his heart?
Neither can he part with his land.
I shall not go to another country,
My heart is in this land
And here it shall remain.
My body cannot part with the earth.
Alfred Wilson’s Words (
Look up at the Milky Way!
see the path it lays across the heavens
and see the branch leading off into emptiness.
We must live according to nature,
or like that branch in the sky
we will carry ourselves
along the path of emptiness.
© Rob Gregg, 2003