This is a prose piece of what might be
called a series of prose poems.
I don't like that term particularly
but I happen to believe that prose and poetry are much more
closely related than most of us believe or most of us know.
And I have become in recent years very much interested
in that relationship and in the way that prose
can reflect poetic considerations,
poetic qualities, and vise versa.
This is called "The Colors of Night."
One, "White."
"An old man's son was killed far away in the Staked Plains.
When the old man heard of it he went there
and gathered up the bones.
Thereafter, wherever the old man ventured,
he led a dark hunting horse which bore the bones of his son
on its back.
And the old man said to whomever he saw,
'you see how it is that now my son consists in his bones,
that his bones are polished and gleam like glass in the light
of the sun and moon, that he is very beautiful.'"
Two is "Yellow."
"There was a boy who drowned in the river near the grove
of 32 bois d'arc trees.
The light of the moon lay like a path on the water,
and a glitter of low brilliance shown in it.
The boy looked at it and was enchanted.
He began to sing a song that he had never heard before--
only then, once did he hear it in his heart,
and it was born like a cloud of down upon his voice.
His voice entered into the bright track of the moon
and he followed after it.
For a time he made his way along the path of the moon singing.
He paddled with his arms and legs
and felt his body rocking down into the swirling water.
His vision ran along the path of light and reached across
the wide night and took hold of the moon. .
And across the river, where the path
led into the shadows of the bank,
a black dog emerged from the river,
shivering and shaking water from its hair.
All night it stood in the waves of grass
and howled the full moon down."
Three is "Brown."
"On the night before a flood, the terrapins
move to high ground.
How is it that they know?
Once there was a boy who took up a terrapin in his hands
and looked at it for a long time, as hard as he could look.
He succeeded in memorizing the terrapin's face,
but he failed to see how it was that the terrapin knew anything
at all.
Four is "Red."
"There was a man who had got possession
of a powerful medicine.
And by means of this medicine he made a woman out
of sumac leaves and lived with her for a time.
Her eyes flashed and her skin shone like pipe stone.
But the man abused her, and so his medicine failed.
The woman was caught up in a whirlwind and blown apart.
Then nothing was left of her but 1,000 withered leaves scattered
in the plain."
Five is "Green."
"A young girl awoke one night and looked out
into the moonlit meadow.
There appeared to be a tree, but it was only an appearance;
there was a shape made of smoke, but it was only an appearance;
there was a tree.
Six is "Blue."
"One night there appeared a child in the camp.
No one had ever seen it before.
It was not bad looking, and it spoke
a language that was pleasant to hear,
though none could understand it.
The wonderful thing was that the child was perfectly unafraid,
as if it were at home among its own people.
The child got on well enough, but the next morning it
was gone as suddenly as it had appeared.
Everyone was troubled.
But then it came to be understood that the child never
was, and everyone felt better.
'After all,' said an old man, 'how can we believe
in the child?
It gave us not one word of sense to hold on to.
What we saw, if indeed we saw anything at all,
must have been a dog from a neighboring camp,
or a bear that wandered down from the high country.'"
Seven is "Purple."
"There was a man who killed a buffalo bull to no purpose,
only he wanted its blood on his hands.
It was a great, old, noble beast,
and it was a long time blowing its life away.
On the edge of the night the people gathered themselves up
in their grief and shame.
Away in the west they could see the hump and spine
of the huge beast which lay dying along
the edge of the world.
They could see its bright blood run
into the sky, where it dried, darkening,
and was at last flecked with flakes of light."
And eight is "Black."
"There was a woman whose hair was
long and heavy and black and beautiful.
She drew it about her like a shawl
and so divided herself from the world
that not even age could find her.
Now and then she steals into the men's societies
and fits her voice into their holiest songs.
And always, just there, is a shadow which the firelight
cannot cleave.