THE CENTURIES OF PAIN
We see the native go his way
So listless, sad and poor.
A copper corpse that’s tumbled up
along a shrouded shore.
Too often as we watch him bend
beneath his piteous yoke,
we call him ‘Noble Red skin’
and mean it as a joke.
Too often we just see the crust
Of sickness, dirt and sin,
and never try to seek the soul
that flickers there within.
How can we know the tears that flood
the centuries of pain?
How can we know the awful loss
of mountain, wood and plain?
How can we know the losing fight
against foul greed and lust?
How can we know the pledge betrayed
the ever broken trust?
For locked up in the native mind,
behind his cryptic eyes
there lives the cold pained memory
of Mother Earth’s lost Paradise.
A Paradise of wood and hill,
Of river, lake and stone,
whose dwellers only asked they
be left at peace – alone.
The other younger races
who came from Europe’s shores
to ‘civilize the savages’,
Ah well, they did their chores.
With bullet, gun and bottle,
with slippery tongue and pen
they robbed him of his Heaven on Earth,
for they were civilized men.
Oh, someday when all ‘Rights and wrongs!’
are balanced on the beam
there may be judgement to repay,
the theft of natives’ dreams.
Meanwhile a sorry folk we are,
Who do not seem to care,
that our red brother prostrate lies
because we put him there….
From the book 'The Way Called Beautiful' by Helen Bird - available on amazon.com thewaycalledbeautiful
'Tears of Yellow Cloud' mixed media on canvas by Helen Bird
#NativeAmerican #poetry #helenbird #art #biography
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