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From “High Places”
THERE is a woman | |
| Has taken my man from me! | |
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| How was I to know, | |
| When I gave him my soul to drink | |
| In the moon of Corn-planting | 5 |
| When the leaves of the oak | |
| Are furred like a mouse’s ear, | |
| When the moon curled like a prayer plume | |
| In the green streak over Tuyonyi? | |
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| When I poured my soul to his | 10 |
| In the midst of my body’s trembling, | |
| How was I to know | |
| That the soul of a woman was no more to him | |
| Than sweet sap dripping | |
| From a bough wind-broken? | 15 |
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| If I had known | |
| I could have kept my soul from him | |
| Even though I kept not my body. | |
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| That woman, with her side-looking eyes! | |
| Whatever she takes from him, | 20 |
| It is my soul she is taking. | |
| Waking sharply at night, | |
| I can feel my life pulled from me, | |
| Like water in an unbaked olla. | |
| Then I know he is with her, | 25 |
| She is drinking from his lips | |
| The soul I gave him. | |
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| Therefore I make black prayers for her | |
| With this raven’s feather, | |
| With owl feathers edged with silence, | 30 |
| That all her days may be night-haunted. | |
| Let blackness come upon her— | |
| The downward road | |
| Toward Sippapu; | |
| Let her walk in the shadow of silence! | 35 |
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| Would I had kept my soul | |
| Though I gave my body! | |
| Better the sly laugh and the pointed finger | |
| Than this perpetual gnawing of my soul | |
| By a light woman. | 40 |
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| Now I know why these women are so fair— | |
| They are fed on the hearts of better women, | |
| Who would not take another’s man | |
| Knowing there is no untying | |
| The knot of free-given affection; | 45 |
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| Let darkness come upon her! | |
| Let her feet stumble | |
| Into the Black Lake of Tears! | |
| Let her soul drown, | |
| Let those above not hear her!— | 50 |
| By the black raven’s plume, | |
| By the owl’s feather! | |
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