The Inner Valley

The night proceeds and dwindling Prepares the day's rebirth. An airman is ascending Above the sleeping earth. And almost disappearing In cloud, a tiny spark, He now is like a cross-stitch, A midget laundry-mark. Beneath him are strange cities, And heavy traffic-lanes, And night-clubs, barracks, stokers, And railways, stations, trains. The shadow of his wing-span Falls heavy on the cloud. Celestial bodies wander Around him in a crowd. And there, with frightful listing Through emptiness, away Through unknown solar systems Revolves the Milky Way. In limitless expanses Are headlands burning bright. In basements and in cellars The stokers work all night. And underneath a rooftop In Paris, maybe Mars Or Venus sees a notice About a recent farce. And maybe in an attic And under ancient slates A man sits wakeful, working, He thinks and broods and waits; He looks upon the pla

I don't believe in omens or fear Forebodings. I flee from neither slander Nor from poison. Death does not exist. Everyone's immortal. Everything is too. No point in fearing death at seventeen, Or seventy. There's only here and now, and light; Neither death, nor darkness, exists. We're all already on the seashore; I'm one of those who'll be hauling in the nets When a shoal of immortality swims by. If you live in a house - the house will not fall. I'll summon any of the centuries, Then enter one and build a house in it. That's why your children and your wives Sit with me at one table, - The same for ancestor and grandson: The future is being accomplished now, If I raise my hand a little, All five beams of light will stay with you. Each day I used my collar bones For shoring up the past, as though with timber, I measured time with geodetic chains And marched across it, as though it were the Urals. I tailored

The time you won your town the race We chaired you through the market-place; Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high. Today, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town. Smart lad, to slip betimes away From fields where glory does not stay, And early though the laurel grows It withers quicker than the rose. Eyes the shady night has shut Cannot see the record cut, And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears. Now you will not swell the rout Of lads that wore their honours out, Runners whom renown outran And the name died before the man. So set, before its echoes fade, The fleet foot on the sill of shade, And hold to the low lintel up The still-defended challenge-cup. And round that early-laurelled head Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead, And find unwithered on its curls The garland briefer than a girl’s.

“All Creatures exist for a purpose. Even an ant knows what that purpose is -not with its brain, but somehow it knows. Only human beings have come to a point where they no longer know why they exist.” * ****** John (Fire) Lame Deer (1903–1976), Lakota Sioux Nation. ◙ Oswaldo Guayasamin