Stewart
Brisby
Poet/Writer
| MAY
I KNEEL AT WOUNDED KNEE? |
| I have seen many
faces this evening but none speak as you with your eyes. Does your regal gaze survey pestilence intertwining the air? Scan hill and great plain for buffalo no longer there since your land was discovered and called America? Tell me warrior do I detect a tear perhaps for little ones who slept beneath diseased blankets or treaties signed in firewater and good faith? And those lines there in the corners is that pain? Pain perhaps of oppression? My people too have these lines. Still oppression is as repetitious to the oppressor as it is unique to the oppressed so I will not say we know your pain only that we too have known pain and I ask may I kneel at wounded knee? For your brother and at once for mine. The days of your past are steeped in blood your nights shrouded in betrayal yet I see you now dignity unmarred proud and strong a great warrior in this portrait. |
Stewart Brisby
(from A Death In America © 1986)