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The wound gaped open;
it was remarkably like the wedge of an orange
when it is split, spurting.
He wanted to close the wound with a kiss,
to graft his mouth to the warm, wet tissue.
He kept about the wound, waiting
and deeply disturbed,
his fascination
like the inside of the wound itself,
deep, as deep almost as the life principle,
the irresistible force of being.
The force lay there in the rupture of the flesh,
there in the centre of the wound.
Had he been born G-d,
he should himself have inflicted the wound,
and he should have taken the wound gently,
gently in his hands, and placed it
among the most brilliant wildflowers
in the meadows of the mountains.
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He finds a fossil fish
there in the riverbed.
He wonders about it,
it is a long time dead.
The dish descends in rock,
as if the sheer incline
might slants its destiny
according to some sign.
So Sagittarius
must swim against the tide.
He reckons upon time,
and time is on his side.
His legend is secure,
he bodies resistance.
The fossil is himself,
his own indifference.
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He wanders the high desert
like a coyote. The wind burns him.
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He saw the black trees leaning
in different ways, their limbs
tangled in the mottled clouds,
the clouds rolling on themselves,
a wide belt of four colours,
yellow, orange, red, and black,
and stars in their tangled limbs
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But then and there the sun bore down
and was a focal length away.
The brain was withered and burned brown,
then gone to ashes, cold and gray
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Six weeks before, Set had been found unconscious in his studio. The studio stank of whiskey and vomit and urine, and it was in a shambles. Paints were splattered on the walls and ceiling and the floor. Canvases and papers were strewn about, crumpled and torn. Next to Set was the medicine bundle, open. The little red blanket had been removed, and exposed was the medicine itself, a bag made from the whole skin of a bear cub, including the head and the feet. Some of its contents were scattered on the floor: a shriveled grizzly paw with great yellow claws, pouches of tobacco and herbs, small fluorite and quartz crystals, a pipestone carved in the shape of a fish, a hard black twist that Grey would later identify as the penis of a wolf, bits of ancient bone, a yellow scalp. The bag was well preserved, though it was obviously very old. The hair was thick and matted. The claws were small and sharp and well formed. Brass buttons were fixed in the eyes and along the vertical incision on the chest and stomach. There was about it, upon and within it, the odor of bear grease, of mold, of death, of deep, humid earth run through with bitter roots.
The Washita River ran, bearing sediment and drift and the leaves of trees and the petals of wildflowers. The earth was fresh and fragrant, and the air clean and warm. The Great Plains had become intricate with color. The ruins of the old school at Rainy Mountain, holding against the weather of hundreds of seasons, stood out in the prairie like prehistoric cairns. The tall yellow grass sounded with the drone of bees and the crackle of grasshoppers. Birds drew lines on the sky, and terrapins crept along the creek. Ghosts convened under the walls of Noake's store, where Worcester Meat, when he was a little boy, went with his father to collect "grass money" for the use of Indian land - there were many wagons, a large camp - and Worcester's father, Youngwater, bought hardtack and pickles and buckets and harness and rock candy. Above all, in the withering heat that shimmered in the noon and afternoon, the land was endless. It was the continental reach, beyond maps and geography, beyond accounts of the voyageurs, almost beyond the distance of dreams. It was the middle and immeasurable meadow of North America . It was the destination and destiny of ancients who, coming with dogs and travois, followed herds of huge, lumbering animals down the long, cold cordillera, following the visions of their shamans, who rattled Arctic bones and cried in the voices of owls and eagles and whose prayers were the lowing of thousand-mile winds. It was the sun's range. Nowhere on earth was there a more perfect equation of freedom and space. Those earliest inhabitants must have beheld the Plains, and each man must have said to himself , "From this time on I shall belong to this land, for it is truly worthy of my strength, my dreams, my life and death. Here I am. Here, I am." The was an abundance of game and water and grass, and an air full of brilliance to sustain the breathing of warriors and comely women and strong, beautiful children, of grandmothers and grandfathers, of holy people. Here, for those old wanderers, was the center of the world, the sacred ground of sacred grounds.
Grey watched the moon rise, huge and red. She heard the stooping of the wind, splintering in the black limbs of the black clusters of trees on the black islands of the plain. She clasped her hands, laughing. A peace pervaded the dusk, but an excitement was certainly just below, just beyond, in the corners of the night. She could not hold still.
In the morning, with Worcester's help, she butchered a calf in the old way, in the way of the grandmother. She took the raw, steaming liver of the calf in her bloody hands and ate of it slowly, savoring the juices; it would give her strength and clarity of mind. It is what Worcester did too, what Walker had done, and Youngwater too, and his father, and his. It is what Set-tainte and Set-angya had done. It was good, a fitting thing. But now, in her woman's heart, having come to the considerable age of twenty years, she longed to plant seeds on the ground, corn and melons and squash, to tend to her mother's flocks, to ride out into the red and blue and purple shadows of Tsegi, "place among the rocks," the place of origin, toward the horizon that was like a rainbow, a horizon in a sand painting or in a watercolor by Beatien Yzz or Quincy Tahoma. She longed to be at home, the home of her childhood. She dreamed of Lukachukai, "place of the reeds bending eastward," of the red cliffs there and the night sky, so brilliant is had never faded in her memory, which challenged even diné bizaad, the Navajo language. The many words and names, all the rich sounds and silences, the shades of meaning, all the images and abstractions, the rhythms and melodies and harmonies, all the aspects of given objects - color, size, feel, shape, taste, age, power, being - which in diné bizaad are precise beyond the precision of other languages, were reduced to simplicity in the presence of the suns over Lukachukai. She yearned to weave at her mother's loom and to enter into a circle of squaw dances, to breathe into her lungs the cold air of the canyons and the nutty smoke of the campfires, to take into her nostrils the aromas of coffee at midnight, among cedars and junipers, and of mutton roasting and bread sizzling in an iron skillet, to listen to the beloved songs, ancient, holy, haunting, and the insistent beat of the drums, echoing into the universe, their throbbing like the vibrations of the stars.
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That summer they lived in the hogan beyond her mother's house. Little by little Set fitted himself into the rhythm of life at Lukachukai. In the night he went out to see, as for the first time, the innumerable brilliant points of light in the sky. Looking at them he thought he had never seen the night, and he wept and laughed and at last kept the silence of the stars . In the early morning he walked into the dawn's light, slowly at first, stiff with cold, but warming as the flood of light fell from the east, and he saw with wonder and fear and thanksgiving the land become radiant, defined by light and long, color-bearing distances. And when enough of his strength returned he began to run.
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He opened his eyes suddenly to the full moon. It was emerging from the black skyline large and white, and it was soon whole in the east. Set stood then and turned. Tsoai, the rock tree, loomed before and above him in the moonlight. It was changing in the motion of the moon, and it seemed alive. Shapes and shadows shifted upon the great green igneous columns, upon the huge granite planes, across the long black vertical fissures. Set stood in awe of Tsoai. He could not take his eyes from it. He was stricken, spellbound. An awful quiet was in his heart; the thing before him was unimaginable, in some sense beyond knowledge and belief, and he knew that it was sacred. As he looked, the stars of the Big Dipper gradually appeared over it. They became brighter and brighter, riding over the north edge of the rick tree, revolving down the sky. And when he brought his focus back upon the monolith, a strange pitch-black shadow lay upon it, near the base. It was the image of a great bear, rearing against Tsoia. It was the vision he had sought.
In the clearing, he belonged. Everything there was familiar to him. He began to move toward the woods with the others. They were laughing, and they drew away from him. He followed, and they began to shout, taunting him, entreating him to play the game, and Loki began to run. Set, set! they shouted. "The bear, the bear!" and ran. And he ran after them. "Yes. I am set, "Loki called out, flailing his arms and chuffing his breath; he was he was ferocious . In the trees now , he gained ground . The girls were breathing hard, glancing back and squealing. Suddenly he slowed and began to stagger and reel. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. His limbs had become very heavy, and his head. He was dizzy. His vision blurred. The objects on the ground at his feet were clear and sharply defined in his sight, but in the distance were only vague shapes in a light like fog. At the same time there was a terrible dissonance in his ears, a whole jumble of sound that came like a blow to his head. He was stunned, but in a moment the confusion of sounds subsided, and he heard things he had never heard before, separately, distinctly, with nearly absolute definition. He heard water running over stones, impressing the rooted earth of a bank beyond stands of undergrowth strummed by the low, purling air, splashing upon a drift of pine needles far downstream. He heard leaves co0llidingoverhead, the scamper of a squirrel deep in the density of trees, the wind careening against an outcrop of rocks high on the opposite slope, the feathers of a hawk ruffling in a long stream of the sky. It was as if he could detect each and every vibration of sound in the whole range of his hearing. And the thin air smarted his nostrils. He could smell a thousand things at once and perceive them individually. He could smell the barks of trees and the rot of roots and the fragrances of grass and wildflowers. He could smell the scat of animals here and there, old and new, across the reach of the hills. He could smell sweet saps and the stench of the deaths of innumerable creatures in the earth. He could smell rain in the distant ranges, fire beyond. He could smell the oils rising to the surface of his skin, and he could smell the breath and sex of his sisters. He caught the sour smell of fear. He looked after his sisters. They too had stopped running. One or two of them had taken steps toward him. He tried to call to them, but he could not; he had no longer a human voice. He saw the change come upon their faces. He could no longer recognize them; they were masks. They turned and ran again. And there came upon him a loneliness like death. He moved on, a shadow receding into shadows.
Shadows.
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