I have a new book coming out, which is called, Next.
And there are two things to read if I can find them
before I start the poem.
This book was mainly written in--
there are some older poems in it, but most of the poems
were written in '86 and '87.
I wrote one poem in 1984, which was
the year that my husband of 26 and 1/2 years died.
And the title comes from a play--
a poem called December Day in Honolulu by Galway Kinnell.
The quote is, this one or that one dies, but never the singer.
One singer falls, but the next steps into the empty place
and sings.
And the dedication which I have--
I have a friend who said that dedication is much too flip.
But I think he would-- it wasn't dedicated to her, first of all.
And the epigraph is to Fred.
See you later, alligator.
And one section of the book is about people whom I have loved
and who have died and who have died young.
The first person-- and all the poems are in the voices
of the person who has died so that their first person--
sometimes I can get a feel for someone else's voice.
The first person is Crazy Horse, the Lakota chieftain
who died at 35.
Do you know who Crazy Horse was?
I think I really fell for Crazy Horse
when I realized that he was a small, quirky kind of odd man,
and that's the kind I like.
And the great love of Crazy Horse's life
was not the woman he married.
He married a woman called Black Shawl.
But the great love of his life was a woman
called Black Buffalo Woman.
And I'm from Buffalo, you know?
And so it seems--
it seemed like a sign of some sort.
And I believe in signs so--
so the poems, there are a series of poems about people.
The first of the poems in this group, the people
are, first, Crazy Horse, then my mother
who died at 44 years old, a dear friend of ours who died at 21,
and my husband who died at 49.
And the first poem is the death of so and so,
and it gives the dates and gives the age.
Now about Crazy Horse--
let's see-- he was a person who would
go into the Black Hills, which was
called the center of the world.
He would become entranced and he believed himself invincible
when he was in a trance.
He was called Crazy Horse not because his horse was crazy,
but because the horse danced et cetera in the dream.
And the best translation that people then could make
was Crazy Horse.
He was a Lakota.
The Sioux nation-- what is called the Sioux nation were
divided into-- were Lakota and Nakota and Dakota,
three groups, language groups.
And now they're all called the Sioux.
And Lakota of course, means us, the human beings,
which is what many Native peoples call themselves.
Anyway, OK.
Wakan Tanka was a great spirit, and this is in his voice.
"the death of crazy horse," 9/5/1877, aged 35.
Oh, another thing I should say was
that the rumor is though people are not sure
where he was buried, his parents took his heart and his bones,
and he had asked that they be buried at Wounded Knee.
And this was before the Wounded Knee battle,
but Crazy Horse could see things, he was a visionary.
In the hills where the hope of the world
bends to the four directions, Wakan Tanka
has shown me the path men walk is a shadow.
I was a boy when I saw it that long hairs and gray beards
and myself must enter the dream to be real.
So I dreamed and I dreamed and I endured.
I am the final war chief, never defeated in battle.
Lakota, remember my name.
Now on this walk, my bones and my heart
are warm in the hands of my father,
Wakan Tanka has shown me the shadows
will break near the creek called Wounded Knee.
Remember my name, Lakota.
I am the final war chief.
Father, my heart, never defeated in battle, father,
my bones, never defeated in battle,
leave them at Wounded Knee and remember our name, Lakota.
I am released from shadow.
My horse dreams and dances under me as I enter the actual world.