Thanks for encouraging and constructive comments on my first post.



SAVAGES


The earth sang to me
of ancient things
calling my unknowing soul
to remembrance

The sun smiled on me
and led my soul up towards the sky
as a sunflower turns
to receive the gift of life

The wind called to me
lifting my soul on eagle's wings
towards the destiny
a proud death brings

The river beckoned me
Beyond my present dreams
towards the open sea
and the peace of forgetfulness

The fire wrapped my soul in flame
and burned my passing body
to ash returning life to the grateful earth
and smoke bearing my spirit to the sky

And all living things were sacred
we killed with respect
and took the buffalo's gifts with honour
to feed clothe and share our lives

And then the white man came……

He raped a now dishonoured earth
and did not hear its cries
when he cut and opened up its heart
he turned away as bleeding, it died

He cursed the sun its heat
and condemned the thwarting rain
clamouring pride deafened nature's beat
and he damned his own God again and again and again

He took the wind and made its force
a slave to his grasping greed
he let nothing follow nature's course
selfish passions overwhelming honest need

He bought, sold and withheld the river's life
dammed and changed its flow
And his discarded deadly careless waste
polluted streams where nothing now can grow

He first enslaved the fire
and taught it endless better ways to kill
a nation's life destroyed on a buffalo pyre
the waste and shame of a soulless will

No sense of sacred, by sacrilegious means
he destroyed not just the land but its people too
he took their past, their present and their future dreams
and fashioned pretty lies of what was real and true

Savages

Zettel 2004