OVER the heart of the west, the Taos
desert
Circles an
eagle,
And it’s dark
between me and him.
The sun, as he waits a moment, huge
and liquid
Standing
without feet on the rim of the far-off mesa
Says: Look
for a last long time then! Look! Look well! I
am
going.
So he
pauses and is beholden, and straightway is
gone.
And the Indian, in a white
sheet
Wrapped to the
eyes, the sheet bound close on his brows,
Stands saying: See, I’m invisible!
Behold how you can’t behold me!
The invisible in its
shroud!
Now that the sun has gone, and the
aspen leaves
And the
cotton-wood leaves are fallen, as good as fallen,
And the ponies are in
corral,
And it’s
night.
Why, more has gone than all
these;
And something
has come.
A red wolf
stands on the shadow’s dark red rim.
Day has gone to dust on the
sage-grey desert
Like a white Christus fallen to dust from a cross;
To dust, to ash, on the twilit
floor of the desert.
And a black crucifix like a dead
tree spreading wings;
Maybe a black eagle with its wings
out
Left lonely in
the night
In a sort
of worship.
And coming down upon us, out of the
dark concave
Of the
eagle’s wings,
And
the coffin-like slit where the Indians’ eyes are,
And the absence of cotton-wood
leaves, or of aspen,
Even the absence of dark-crossed donkeys:
Come tall old demons,
smiling
The Indian
smile,
Saying:
How do you do, you
pale-face?
I am very well, old
demon.
How are
you?
Call me Harry if
you will,
Call me
Old Harry says he.
Or the abbreviation of Nicolas,
Nick. Old Nick,
maybe.
Well, you’re a dark old
demon,
And I’m a
pale-face like a homeless dog
That has followed the sun from the dawn through
the east
Trotting
east and east and east till the sun himself went home,
And left me homeless here in
the dark at your door.
How do you think we’ll get on,
Old demon, you and
I?
You and I, you
pale-face,
Pale-face
you and I
Don’t get
on.
Mightn’t we try?
Where’s your
God, you white one?
Where’s your white God?
He fell to dust as the twilight
fell,
Was fume as I
trod
The last step
out of the east.
Then you’re a
lost white dog of a pale-face,
And the day’s now
dead. . . .
Touch me carefully, old
father,
My beard is
red.
Thin red wolf of
a pale-face,
Thin
red wolf, go home.
I have no home, old
father,
That’s why I
come.
We take no hungry stray from the pale-face . . .
Father, you are not
asked.
I am come. I
am here. The red-dawn-wolf
Sniffs round your place.
Lifts up his voice and howls to
the walls of the pueblo,
Announcing he’s here.
The dogs of the
dark pueblo
Have
long fangs . . .
Has the red wolf trotted east and
east and east
From
the far, far other end of the day
To fear a few fangs?
Across the pueblo river
That dark old demon and
I
Thus say a few
words to each other
And wolf, he calls me, and
red.
I call him no
names.
He says,
however, he is Star-Road.
I say, he can go back the same
gait.
As for me . . .
Since I trotted at the tail of
the sun as far as ever the
creature went
west,
And lost him
here,
I’m going to
sit down on my tail right here
And wait for him to come back with a new
story.
I’m the red
wolf, says the dark old father.
All right, the red dawn wolf I
am.
Taos.