Читать книгу A Geography of Blood - Candace Savage - Страница 5

Prelude

We see them as a raven might see

them, from a distance.

The men walk single file, dark strokes etched

against an infinite plain of snow.

Behind them, a day’s straggling march to the south,

lie a cold prison cell and the grim

accusing faces of the Great Father’s blue-coated soldiers.

Ahead of them, if the spirits prove willing,

are friends and family, and the uncertain

embrace of the Great Mother and her red-coated police.

It is late November 1881, already

the dead of winter.

The men walk with the ghosts of the buffalo.

They are almost ghosts themselves.

The soldiers have taken their rifles and ammunition,

their torn lodges, their moccasins.

They are hungry. The snow stings their skin.

The police: it is hard to tell what the red coats

have taken, are taking. The truth.

Otapanihowin, the means of survival.

Black wings rasp against the frigid air.

Two men stumble, get up, fall.

The leader of the travelers, that Nekaneet

looks up, then looks ahead to the blue smudge

of hills on the horizon. That means, just like

if we walk, if you are ahead, you are

kani’kanit, the leader. Nekaneet is walking

north, walking home, walking into another day.

Somewhere up there in the distance,

you and I are waiting, hungry for stories.