MOUNTAINS
blanket-wrapped
Round a white hearth of desert —
While the sun
goes round
And round
and round the desert,
The mountains never get up and walk
about.
They can’t,
they can’t wake.
They camped and
went to sleep
In the
last twilight
Of
Indian gods;
And
they can’t wake.
Indians dance
and run and stamp —
No good.
White men
make gold-mines and the mountains unmake them
In their
sleep.
The Indians
laugh in their sleep
From fear,
Like a
man when he sleeps and his sleep is over, and he
can’t wake up,
And
he lies like a log and screams and his scream is silent
Because his body can’t wake
up;
So he laughs
from fear, pure fear, in the grip of the
sleep.
A dark membrane
over the will, holding a man down
Even when the mind has flickered
awake;
A membrane of
sleep, like a black blanket.
We walk in our
sleep, in this land,
Somnambulist wide-eyed afraid.
We scream for
someone to wake us
And our scream is soundless in the paralysis of sleep,
And we know
it.
The Penitentes
lash themselves till they run with blood
In their efforts to come awake
for one moment;
To
tear the membrane of this sleep . . .
No good.
The Indians
thought the white man would awake them . . .
And instead, the white men
scramble asleep in the mountains,
And ride on horseback asleep forever through the
desert,
And shoot
one another, amazed and mad with somnambulism,
Thinking death will awaken
something . . .
No
good.
Born with a
caul,
A black
membrane over the face,
And unable to tear it,
Though the mind is
awake.
Mountains
blanket-wrapped
Round the ash-white hearth of the desert;
And though the sun leaps like a
thing unleashed in the sky
They can’t get up, they are under the
blanket.
Taos.