And the last thing I want to read from this book
before I look at the new manuscript
is called "The Ritual of Condolence."
I'll read five of the sections.
It's written in 15 parts.
And "The Ritual of Condolence" is basically
in our tradition with Hiawatha, as people probably heard
of him.
He's actually-- his name is pronounced Ayenwathaaa.
When Ayenwathaaa had daughters, they were killed by--
a leader who's evil actually killed them.
And Dekanawidah who is our peacemaker,
and who sometimes you hear of if you know Iroquois history,
the peacemaker came, he was the one
who condoled Ayenwathaaa through these deaths,
and was able to explain to him how he needed to grieve.
So there were 15 steps that Dekanawidah came up with.
And I've kept the original title,
say, society itself is seen as a woman.
And when we lose one member, that woman goes into mourning.
So the woman needs to be healed.
You have to address everything that changes in mourning.
How we-- our eyes close up, we cease to see what's happening
around us, our ears close up, we cease to hear the things that
would hear us, our throat--
within the breast, the darkness of
grief that we forget to look at the sun.
So kept us different headings, but I'll just
read five of the 15.
It came at a time in my life when my father just
died of a brain tumor, and I was feeling like I needed
to go through the process.
"The Ritual of Condolence."
"Ears or hearing.
At times, I lived like a man obstructed,
hearing nothing of what was taking place on Earth,
but focused on the flush of blood to many parts.
But at least I know when I lost faith in myself.
Desert November, a lover of laughs not saying goodbye
though I knew it was.
Because the Russian olive dropped all its leaves at once.
I threw the dog from my bed and he limped for days,
fearing fracture.
Never again to trust myself, sentence
to hear the cry of all things broken.
Throat.
Of all that rises from that deep pitcher,
throat of the flesh bodies hardly obstructed.
When he died, I went to the river and called him like a man
from the field at supper time, and the air
was filled with the prevalence of his absence.
And now, you leave and when I cry,
it sounds like pure adolescence, a simple choking and throttling
embarrassing and shaming red faced and angered
stroking sore Adam's apple.
This knot I feel is the sum of my words collected
in this place.
Within his breast.
The disordered and wrenched within bed and breast, emotions
thrown off in a night of fevered dreaming
lay tangled on the hardwood among strands of your hair.
But today began the work of reorganization
and I broke every cup you ever raised to your mouth.
I replaced the heart between the lungs straight in the spleen,
the liver and order, but the heart looked like a queer new
building standing in place of one once familiar,
which even now I cannot recall.
The woman and warrior.
I know that the hair at his nape,
turning to oily down the way the sick transform before diving
or taking flight.
Preparing a place, he'd smooth the pillow
three times before resting his head,
once for the father, once for the son,
and once for the Holy Ghost.
He died only once, and who can know what it was she
felt waking to a silence only the planet should know
and trusting his breath to the becoming.
Anything can happen on Earth, even insanity.
Sleepless for the barking of birds, the dog
lays twittering at the foot of my bed.
A slow splash caused by the falling
away of the mind, the thickening slip of clay
from a lake so strangely excited by this unexpected chance
to form and reform fingers in this red Earth,
that when these hands are complete again,
the clouds might cease to squirm."