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AT WOUNDED KNEE
Three days and no one comes to close my eyes.
I am as cold and quiet as a stone
on the white ground. I wait and cannot rise.
Death steals less swiftly than a bullet flies:
the ache has time to settle in the bone.
Three days and no one comes to close my eyes.
Because the snow falls and the wind still cries
here I remain like something broken, thrown
to the white ground. I wait and cannot rise,
nor yet lie easy, as a dead man lies,
though surely death has claimed me for its own.
Three days and no one comes to close my eyes.
My spirit beats its awkward wings and tries
to take the air but, like the snow, is blown
to the white ground. I wait and cannot rise
to run like lightning through these winter skies
with ghosts of kin who see how still I've grown
in three days. No one comes to close my eyes.
On the white ground I wait and cannot rise.
Williamb
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