Poetry Sunday: The Sacred Circle

Here's a poem about the Native American experience, but really it's the universal experience of leaving home and, perhaps, finding your way back again. Happily or unhappily.

The Sacred Circle

BY ADRIAN C. LOUIS

Numanah, Grandfather, grant me the grace

of a new song far from this lament

of lame words and fossils of a losing game.

No more flat pebbles skimmed between the wetness

of tongue and thigh and eye again!

I never asked to be the son of a stained mattress

who contemplated venison stew and knew

the shame hidden in grease clouds stuck to the wall

behind the woodstove where Grandmother cooked.

I only wanted to run far, so far from Indian land.

And, God damn it, when I was old enough I did.

I loitered in some great halls of ivy

and allowed the inquisition of education:

electric cattle prods placed lovingly

to the lobes of my earth memories.

I carried the false spirit force of sadness

wrapped in a brown sack in the pocket

of a worn, tweed coat.

In junkie alleyways I whispered of forgotten arrows

in the narrow passages of my own discarded history.

Then, when I was old enough

I ran back to Indian land.

Now I’m thinking of running from here.

 

                                                Pine Ridge, South Dakota

                                                February 1988