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 days 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._