Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim Ramsey
There is an almost southern charm to this ...
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Jim, the poet does indeed have ties to the American South, so I think you’re on to something. I’ve never read Neihardt, but the subjects he’s known for make me think you’d enjoy this by my mystery poet (though I could’ve done without the romanticized “Indian-fighters”):
Inheritors
I
We were the pioneers
the long-haired men in coon caps
the clear-eyed
who saw dusk coming slowly
like bitter smoke out of the hills
We were the cavaliers
the Virginians
who came down through Cumberland Gap
into East Tennessee
We were the quiet-spoken men who knew weather
and ways of the woods
who heard twigs snap at midnight
and woke at the sound trigger-quick
grasping steel
who leapt out of blankets
and rushed to the flaming stockade
We were the ones that eked out a lean season
with handfuls of grain
ate roots when the grain gave out
and slept in our boots to keep warm
Broke ice at morning
to wash the sleep from our eyes
and took the trail westward again
For we were the ones that known lands
were not large enough to contain
the adventurers
the ones that must have something new
II
What has become
of our deer-skinned, moccasined race?
Were all of them lost
in crossing the Isthmus
in rounding the Strait of Magellan?
Did none get past
the tortuous ridge of the Rockies?
Did these hold them fast?
Did the Santa Fe Trail
through glittering death-strewn desert
lead nowhere at last?
Where are the Indian-fighters
the young pioneers
who flat-boated down the Ohio
past Cumberland Gap
with women and horses and guns
to make a new world?
III
The towns have taken them
The cities have done their best to make whores
of our sweet-limbed daughters
our sons have grown round
with unwholesome accretions of fat
with muscles well-covered, disused
and the softness of wealth
The western acres have turned our flesh into bread
our bone into wood to build houses
our blood is caught up
in the churning motion of wheels
We move with the tide of a people
we are lost in a crowd
we teem with the teeming of millions
producing our kind
and a kind that is not our kind
and the spawn of the millions increase
and move closer about us
in slowly constricting embrace
IV
Sound the horn, sentry!
When will we move out again?
Waking at dawn, starting early
going down the new trail
clear-eyed and alert
fresh with the freshness of morning
coffee-warmed and exhilarated with movement
striking out into day
our guns bearing lightly before us
arms wielding the axe with keen vigor
firm-muscled, easy, relaxed
Going down the divide into valley
or climbing steep hill
with the blue mist curling around us
our feet on bare rock
our nostrils appraising the weather
conjecturing rain
our thighs straining upwards
our sweat-rivered backs to the sun
the adversative stone
consenting by perilous inches
And then dropping down
among the sweet pines and the cedars
to ford the clear stream
Wading in waist-deep
swimming out with a strong sure stroke
against the fierce pull of the current
and reaching the shore
And then pressing onwards
still onwards
with the sun now declining before us
with the glare in our narrowing eyes
and the plains sweeping round us
Then stopping for night
for night and for rest and for food
and the woodsmoke rising again blue and bitter
and the jug passed around the quiet fire
V
Sound the horn, sentry!
We break camp at dawn!
Our feet will remember the trail
our feet will climb up through the foothills
or cross the wide plains
through glistening white clouds of morning
Our women will follow behind us
clear-eyed and deep-breasted
bearing our sons in their loins
And the earth will divide at our coming
the hills flatten out!
Sound the horn, sentry!
The time has come to move on!
*
I haven’t sparked a lot of interest with my mystery, so I’ll let the cat out of the bag—the same cat that was on a hot tin roof. The poet is Tennessee Williams.