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| Arapaho Ghost Dance ceremony, 1890, an engraving from the National Archives |
You who smiled with me
in the geometries of evening,
the red sun between barns,
contrails crossed in a darkening sky,
it is not too late for us,
it is not too late for us.
Did you not see the crow
when it flew down
to the earth,
to the earth ?
He has taken pity on us.
Did you not feel the earth tremble ?
My child, my child,
stretch out your hands,
every being will rise,
circle with me in the dust
five days and four nights,
we shall rise again,
we shall rise again,
singing ourselves
into a different reality.
—with elements of songs from the Ghost Dance religion in the late 19th Century of the Arapaho, Kiowa, Cheyenne, and Comanche as anthologized in "Technicians of the Sacred," edited by Jerome Rothenberg, University of California Press, second edition, copyright 1968, 1985, Jerome Rothenberg.
