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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Lew Sarett

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

I: Broken Bird

Lew Sarett

From “The Box of God”

O BROKEN bird,

Whose whistling silver wings have known the lift

Of high mysterious hands, and the wild sweet music

Of big winds among the ultimate stars!—

The black-robed curés put your pagan Indian

Soul in their white man’s House of God, to lay

Upon your pagan lips new songs, to swell

The chorus of amens and hallelujahs.

In simple faith and holy zeal, they flung

Aside the altar-tapestries, that you

Might know the splendor of God’s handiwork,

The shining glory of His face. O eagle,

They brought you to a four-square box of God,

Crippled of pinion, clipped of soaring wing;

And they left you there to flutter against the bars

In futile flying, to beat against the gates,

To droop, to dream a little, and to die.

Ah, Joe Shing-ób—by the sagamores revered

As Spruce the Conjurer, by the black-priests dubbed

The Pagan Joe—how clearly I recall

Your conversion in the long-blade’s House of God,

Your wonder when you faced its golden glories.

Don’t you remember?—when first you sledged from out

The frozen Valley of the Sleepy-eye,

And hammered on the gates of Fort Brazeau—

To sing farewell to Ah-nah-qúod, the Cloud,

Sleeping, banked high with flowers, clothed in the pomp

Of white man’s borrowed garments in the church?

Oh, how your heart, as a child’s heart beating before

High wonder-workings, thrilled at the burial splendor!—

The coffin, shimmering-black as moonlit ice,

And gleaming in a ring of waxen tapers;

After the chant of death, the long black robes,

Blown by the wind and winding over the hills

With slow black songs to the marked-out-place-of-death;

The solemn feet that moved along the road

Behind the wagon-with-windows, the wagon-of-death,

With its jingling nickel harness, its dancing plumes.

Oh, the shining splendor of that burial march,

The round-eyed wonder of the village throng!

And oh, the fierce-hot hunger, the burning envy

That seared your soul when you beheld your friend

Achieve such high distinction from the black-robes!

And later, when the cavalcade of priests

Wound down from the fenced-in-ground, like a slow black worm

Crawling upon the snow—don’t you recall?—

The meeting in the mission?—that night, your first,

In the white man’s lodge of holy-medicine?

How clearly I can see your hesitant step

On the threshold of the church; within the door

Your gasp of quick surprise, your breathless mouth;

Your eyes round-white before the glimmering taper,

The golden-filigreed censer, the altar hung

With red rosettes and velvet soft as an otter’s

Pelt in the frost of autumn, with tinsel sparkling

Like cold blue stars above the frozen snows.

Oh, the blinding beauty of that House of God!—

Even the glittering bar at Jock McKay’s,

Tinkling with goblets of fiery devil’s-spit,

With dazzling vials and many-looking mirrors,

Seemed lead against the silver of the mission.

I hear again the chanting holy-men,

The agents of the white man’s Mighty Spirit,

Making their talks with strong, smooth-moving tongues:

“Hear! Hear ye, men of a pagan faith!

Forsake the idols of the heathen fathers,

The too-many ghosts that walk upon the earth.

For there lie pain and sorrow, yea, and death!

“Hear! Hear ye, men of a pagan faith!

And grasp the friendly hands we offer you

In kindly fellowship, warm hands and tender,

Yea, hands that ever give and never take.

Forswear the demon-charms of medicine-men;

Shatter the drums of conjuring Chée-sah-kée—

Yea, beyond these walls lie bitterness and death!

“Pagans!—ye men of a bastard birth!—bend,

Bow ye, proud heads, before this hallowed shrine!

Break!—break ye the knee beneath this roof,

For within this house lives God! Abide ye here!

Here shall your eyes behold His wizardry;

Here shall ye find an everlasting peace.”

Ah, Joe the pagan, son of a bastard people,

Child of a race of vanquished, outlawed children,

Small wonder that you drooped your weary head,

Blinding your eyes to the suns of elder days;

For hungry bellies look for new fat gods,

And heavy heads seek newer, softer pillows.

With you again I hear the eerie chants

Floating from out the primal yesterdays—

The low sweet song of the doctor’s flute, the slow

Resonant boom of the basswood water-drum,

The far voice of the fathers, calling, calling.

I see again the struggle in your eyes—

The hunted soul of a wild young grouse, afraid,

Trembling beneath maternal wings, yet lured

By the shrill whistle of the wheeling hawk.

I see your shuffling limbs, hesitant, faltering

Along the aisle—the drag of old bronzed hands

Upon your moccasined feet, the forward tug

Of others, soft and white and very tender.

One forward step … another … a quick look back!—

Another step … another … and lo! the eyes

Flutter and droop before a flaming symbol,

The strong knees break before a blazoned altar

Glimmering its tapestries in the candle-light,

The high head beaten down and bending before

New wonder-working images of gold.

And thus the black-robes brought you into the house

Wherein they kept their God, a house of logs,

Square-hewn, and thirty feet by forty. They strove

To put before you food, and purple trappings—

Oh, how they walked you up and down in the vestry,

Proudly resplendent in your white man’s raiment,

Glittering and gorgeous, the envy of your tribe:

Your stiff silk hat, your scarlet sash, your shoes

Shining and squeaking gloriously with newness!

Yet even unto the end—those blood-stained nights

Of the sickness-on-the-lung; that bitter day

On the Barking Rock, when I packed you down from camp

At Split-hand Falls to the fort at Sleepy-eye;

While, drop by drop, your life went trickling out,

As sugar-sap that drips on the birch-bark bucket

And finally chills in the withered maple heart

At frozen dusk: even unto the end—

When the mission doctor, framed by guttering candles,

Hollowly tapped his hooked-horn finger here

And there upon your bony breast, like a wood-bird

Pecking and drumming on a rotten trunk—

Even unto this end I never knew

Which part of you was offering the holy prayers—

The chanting mouth, or the eyes that gazed beyond

The walls to a far land of windy valleys.

And sometimes, when your dry slow lips were moving

To perfumed psalms, I could almost, almost see

Your pagan soul aleap in the fire-light, naked,

Shuffling along to booming medicine-drums,

Shaking the flat black earth with moccasined feet,

Dancing again—back among the jangling

Bells and the stamping legs of gnarled old men—

Back to the fathers calling, calling across

Dead winds from the dim gray years.

O high-flying eagle,

Whose soul, wheeling among the sinuous winds,

Has known the molten glory of the sun,

The utter calm of dusk, and in the evening

The lullabies of moonlit mountain waters!—

The black-priests locked you in their House of God,

Behind great gates swung tight against the frightened

Quivering aspens, whispering perturbed in council,

And muttering as they tapped with timid fists

Upon the doors and strove to follow you

And hold you; tight against the uneasy winds

Wailing among the balsams, fumbling upon

The latch with fretful fingers; tight against

The crowding stars who pressed their troubled faces

Against the windows. In honest faith and zeal,

The black-robes put you in a box of God,

To swell the broken chorus of amens

And hallelujahs; to flutter against the door,

Crippled of pinion, bruised of head; to beat

With futile flying against the gilded bars;

To droop, to dream a little, and to die.