WEBVTT

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In the poem, many of the newer
poems are biographical poems.

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I haven't read-- these
last two that I'm

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going to read are both
poems that are lives.

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One of the poems in here
is called "Writing Lives,"

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which is a title
stolen from Leon Edel,

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but the poem is dedicated to
Leo, and so I think it's OK.

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Vasari wrote a book
in the Renaissance

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called Lives of
the Artists, and he

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wrote about the great painters
of the early Renaissance.

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And in some cases, all that we
know is what Vasari tells us.

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The title of this poem is
"Lives of the Artists,"

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and it's not about
the Renaissance.

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"It was when the school
had burned down that he

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started making the book.

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Early in the year, at the
time, the moons of snow

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were beginning to
wane in hollows out

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on the plain he had
come back to last year

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as though it were
home, bringing the name

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they had dressed him in.

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He was sleeping in the
loft where all of the boys

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were put after the fire.

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They slept up over the horses
in the house of the horses

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and the horse smell.

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And all night, they heard
horses breathing just

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below their own
breath and hooves

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in the dark and dry grass.

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Then he began wanting to make
a book of what he had seen

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and how it went on.

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He lay awake hearing himself
want to make pictures

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the right way of what was and
could not be found ever again

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in the day, in the steamy yard
of the agency with its panes

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of vacant windows rattling
to their own light.

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A book with no parents
since he had none.

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It would give for
the dead no names

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but might show some
of the same birds

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that were called differently
in the true place

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where he had been small,
the tales like split

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smoke reflected and
flights of white shields,

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and the buffalo would be
there as they appeared to him,

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the bulls thudding
together like mossy rocks

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so the ground shook.

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But how would he make the
sound of their running wake out

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of the lined pages of the red
ledger where he would draw them

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and the rush of their breath
as he kept hearing it?

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His friends would
help, who were older

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in the time of the
buffalo and still

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had names from
there that you could

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draw with a picture, Horse-Back,
Dark Cloud, Black Wolf, Hill

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Man.

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Whereas now for himself, how
could you draw a Henderson?

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What was there anywhere that
looked like a Henderson?

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There was only a word
for him, a Henderson

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in the night who had
gone away in a wagon

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to learn to make wagons,
and who had shouted

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Baldly with the others,
and who could read

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the new language
for the children

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but who nursed the tapeworm
and was never content,

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a bad element, always
wanting to go home.

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He would draw
friends in the book

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with their true hair braided to
the ground before it was cut.

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They would be talking together
in their richest robes.

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They would be riding off
to battle leading horses.

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They would be singing.

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He would show the butterfly of
the thunder on the white horse

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with birds bringing power down
and the green frogs spread

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on the dream shield no
bullet could pass through.

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His friends would be chasing
the blue soldiers off the page.

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He would show the
ground where they

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fought at adobe walls,
the guns from the houses,

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the hoof prints going around.

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And the fight would not
be done, so his friends

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would still be riding
in the open with nothing

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touching them.

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And he would still
be a boy at home,

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hungry in summer, who had not
heard them tell how it ended,

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how they would fight no
more and none of them

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would have been taken yet
far away to the tall fences

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nowhere in the south,
the waiting nowhere,

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and the days there,
and the nights

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there, the strange moon, the new
hunger they had no words for.

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And he would have years
before the wagons changed

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him and he came back to meet
Reverend Haury, who always knew

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better and made him a
bright Indian, teaching

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with white words.

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But in the drawings,
he would have

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the dancers who could
dance everything backward.

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They would dance in
the book he would

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send to Ms. Underwood
before his 23rd year

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and his death of causes no one
bothered to name with so many

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of them dying,
whatever they died of.

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And then there
was only the book.

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And he had never met Little
Fingernail, his elder

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by a few years only who had
been herded south to the fences

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with the rest of the Cheyennes,
when the spiders had lied

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to them again and had led them
down nowhere in their turn,

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but who had seen that
he could not live there

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and had said it would be
better to die trying to go home

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and had started north at night
with the others of his mind

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when the first
leaves were turning.

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He who was their singer,
with the Singing Cloud who

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would be his wife, and her dying
father, and the children who

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would learn to be
quiet, and the mothers

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and the men with bows and guns
knowing that by morning, they

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must be gone like a
summer and that they

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were leaving without the
few things in the world that

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might protect them, the
sacred arrows, the sacred hat,

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and would have only the
horizon of each day to hide in.

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Yet he knew they must not wait
for the old power any longer

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but must find their own in
their going as his hand often

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had drawn out of nothing, the
life they could no longer see,

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the horses flying and arrows
flying and never coming down,

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the long lances reaching ahead
and not yet touching a thing,

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the war feathers trailing
behind and the dark stars that

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were bullets.

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And you could see by
the shields and what

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they wore who was
there in the fighting,

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riding into the smoke of the
blue spiders all in a line.

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And who rode after the spiders
to shoot them off their horses

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and leave them
scattered on the ground?

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And who took their guns,
their coats and bugles?

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He, Little Fingernail, could
make it appear again and again

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in pictures.

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And after the spiders came
chasing them to bring them back

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and shot at the
chief Little Wolf

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standing there
talking with them,

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and when they shot a child, a
girl, and in their turn were

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driven back fewer and
smaller than they had come,

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he wanted to make a
book of what he had seen

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and would see on the
way home so that how

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they fought and went on would
be there after it was gone.

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But he must lose more friends
to the spiders who shot them

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on sight, and he
must come to dream

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of walking in a world all
white before at a place

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where one more time they
had fought off the spiders.

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He found waiting on
the ground the book

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he had been wishing for with
the pages all white, blown open

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and the sticks of color
lying beside it for him

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to make into how
he saw them going.

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And before they crossed the iron
road and the first of the three

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wide rivers, he had tied
the book to his back

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with strips of rawhide
around him under his shirt.

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So it was there as he rode
ahead and as he peered out

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through bear brush
on the low hills,

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as he circled back to coax
the spiders from the trail,

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as he fought, as he
mourned for friends fallen,

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as the horses weakened
and the first snow fell

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among them, as they hid without
fires, as the skin grew loose

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over their bones, as some
crept out to turn into scouts

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for the spiders, as
the chiefs disagreed,

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and as they all said
goodbye while the snow fell

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and they went two ways.

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It was there as they
crouched in brush huts

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starving through blizzards and
were betrayed, and surrounded,

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and forced to lay down the
15 guns they could not hide

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and the bows they had made.

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It was still there
as they were herded

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into the fort where
Crazy Horse had been

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murdered after the promises.

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And as they were
locked in, it was there

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with the few knives
and the other guns

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they had managed to hide.

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And through the time of
waiting under guard there,

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he could make parts of
their journey return

00:09:14.460 --> 00:09:15.780 align:middle line:90%
across the pages.

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So little remaining from the
whole story up until then.

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And it was tied to his back
again in the cold night when

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they dropped the guards
with the first shots,

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and poured from the
windows to the snow

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then ran past the walls to
the river keeping together

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while the bullets
burrowed into them,

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and the horses came crashing
after them through the drifts.

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And those who got
as far as the river

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hid in the bluffs in
the hard cold, the blood

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freezing on their wounds.

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They lay still with the
dead children and women

00:09:52.020 --> 00:09:53.920 align:middle line:90%
stunned by loss.

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And when morning whitened
and those who were living

00:09:57.660 --> 00:10:01.670 align:middle line:84%
found each other again, it
was he, Little Fingernail,

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who led the last of them out
of the ring of watching spiders

00:10:05.870 --> 00:10:08.420 align:middle line:84%
into the bitter
white of the hills.

00:10:08.420 --> 00:10:13.280 align:middle line:84%
But there is nothing in the
book except the blank pages

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for the rest of it, the last
hiding places, the last meat

00:10:18.290 --> 00:10:21.650 align:middle line:84%
from the snow, the last
morning in the hollow

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above the empty
river, and the spiders

00:10:24.320 --> 00:10:29.030 align:middle line:84%
massed at the foot of the hill,
the last loading of their guns

00:10:29.030 --> 00:10:32.810 align:middle line:84%
as the roar of rifles from
below rolled toward them

00:10:32.810 --> 00:10:37.130 align:middle line:84%
and over the heads of the
children, and of Singing Cloud,

00:10:37.130 --> 00:10:38.420 align:middle line:90%
and the others.

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His voice rose, and the
last singing, and some

00:10:42.020 --> 00:10:46.760 align:middle line:84%
joined him in the death song,
the men not as many as 20.

00:10:46.760 --> 00:10:49.370 align:middle line:90%
'I am going to die now.

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If there is anything difficult,
if there is anything dangerous,

00:10:53.930 --> 00:10:56.270 align:middle line:90%
it is mine to do.'

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As the spiders charged
to the breastwork

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to shoot down into
any still moving,

00:11:01.820 --> 00:11:05.000 align:middle line:84%
and even then, he
rushed out at their fire

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with his knife raised.

00:11:06.680 --> 00:11:09.650 align:middle line:84%
And they found afterward
under his shirt

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a book tied with
strips of rawhide

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to his back and the
holes of two Sharps rifle

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bullets almost in the same
place through all its pages.

00:11:20.690 --> 00:11:23.600 align:middle line:84%
It was a Colonel who
took it from the body

00:11:23.600 --> 00:11:26.630 align:middle line:84%
after what would be
called The Engagement.

00:11:26.630 --> 00:11:29.300 align:middle line:84%
An account book
stiff with blood,

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and he kept it for the
pictures of which only one can

00:11:32.990 --> 00:11:36.290 align:middle line:84%
be seen now lying
open under glass

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beside other examples
in the airless hall

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of the museum, red.

00:11:41.960 --> 00:11:45.200 align:middle line:84%
Lions fly from the
neck of the horse

00:11:45.200 --> 00:11:49.310 align:middle line:84%
on which the man with
long braids is racing.

00:11:49.310 --> 00:11:52.340 align:middle line:84%
And in the white
sky are black stars

00:11:52.340 --> 00:11:55.730 align:middle line:84%
with black tears
running down from them

00:11:55.730 --> 00:12:00.590 align:middle line:84%
in delighted silence through
which strangers pass.

00:12:00.590 --> 00:12:05.500 align:middle line:84%
And some of them pause
there with all they know."

00:12:05.500 --> 00:12:06.000 align:middle line:90%