ORIGINAL LANGUAGE

The original language of the land is grass.
Grass learns to speak the language of bison.
Bison learn to speak the language of human.
And every human, laying down for the last time,
learns again the language of grass.

These are the songs we sing to each other.
These are the songs that rise in the green flux,
that snort in the air or hang with frost over the great valleys,
that flutter from lips like a flute's breath
and pulse with rhythms beat on the taut circle of tongues.

The old words still howl in the vowels of the wind.
Poetry still sounds in the hoof beats pounding
against the skin-stretched grass.
Something on the black horizon hums
the tympanum of memory and we remember.

We remember what it is to speak the straight words.
To make breath and tongue talk the old good words.
To draw back the twisted cord and let go.
To hear the truth hiss and thump straight
to the root of the bloody speckled feathers.

Red bubbles and froths at the corners of the mouth.
We kneel in the grass to die or to pray.
We scrape a little clay into a ball of words.
She holds us closer than ever before.
She sings to us and like a baby we understand.

Something good and strong was here
when the land spoke grass that spoke bison
that spoke human that spoke grass.
Something good and strong still waits
in the space between breath and breath.

The original language of the land
whispers everywhere around us,
and waits for someone to hear
and chant what was into what can be,
so at last all words become this one prayer.


© 1999 by Richard W. Todd

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