I watch the Indians dancing to help the young corn at Taos <br />pueblo. The old men squat in a ring <br />And make the song, the young women with fat bare arms, and a <br />few shame-faced young men, shuffle the dance. <br /> <br />The lean-muscled young men are naked to the narrow loins, <br />their breasts and backs daubed with white clay, <br />Two eagle-feathers plume the black heads. They dance with <br />reluctance, they are growing civilized; the old men persuade them. <br /> <br />Only the drum is confident, it thinks the world has not changed; <br />the beating heart, the simplest of rhythms, <br />It thinks the world has not changed at all; it is only a dreamer, <br />a brainless heart, the drum has no eyes. <br /> <br />These tourists have eyes, the hundred watching the dance, white <br />Americans, hungrily too, with reverence, not laughter; <br />Pilgrims from civilization, anxiously seeking beauty, religion, <br />poetry; pilgrims from the vacuum. <br /> <br />People from cities, anxious to be human again. Poor show how <br />they suck you empty! The Indians are emptied, <br />And certainly there was never religion enough, nor beauty nor <br />poetry here ... to fill Americans. <br /> <br />Only the drum is confident, it thinks the world has not changed. <br />Apparently only myself and the strong <br />Tribal drum, and the rockhead of Taos mountain, remember <br />that civilization is a transient sickness.<br /><br />Robinson Jeffers<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/new-mexican-mountain/
