"I am not one who was born in the custody of wisdom. I am one who is fond of olden times and intense in quest of the sacred knowing of the ancients." Gustave Courbet

16 March 2017

Dream.


'Twas the lean coyote told me, baring his slavish soul,
As I counted the ribs of my dead cayuse and cursed at the desert sky,
The tale of the Upland Rider's fate while I dug in the water hole
For a drop, a taste of the bitter seep; but the water hole was dry!

"He came," said the lean coyote, "and he cursed as his pony fell;
And he counted his pony's ribs aloud; yea, even as you have done.
He raved as he ripped at the clay-red sand like an imp from the pit of hell,
Shriveled with thirst for a thousand years and craving a drop — just
one."

"His name?" I asked, and he told me, yawning to hide a grin:
"His name is writ on the prison roll and many a place beside;
Last, he scribbled it on the sand with a finger seared and thin,
And I watched his face as he spelled it out — laughed as I laughed, and
died.

"And thus," said the lean coyote, "his need is the hungry's feast,
And mine." I fumbled and pulled my gun — emptied it wild and fast,
But one of the crazy shots went home and silenced the waiting beast;
There lay the shape of the Liar, dead! 'Twas I that should laugh the last.

Laugh? Nay, now I would write my name as the Upland Rider wrote;
Write? What need, for before my eyes in a wide and wavering line
I saw the trace of a written word and letter by letter float
Into a mist as the world grew dark; and I knew that the name was mine.

Dreams and visions within the dream; turmoil and fire and pain;
Hands that proffered a brimming cup — empty, ere I could take;
Then the burst of a thunder-head — rain! It was rude, fierce rain!
Blindly down to the hole I crept, shivering, drenched, awake!

Dawn — and the edge of the red-rimmed sun scattering golden flame,
As stumbling down to the water hole came the horse that I thought was dead;
But never a sign of the other beast nor a trace of a rider's name;
Just a rain-washed track and an empty gun — and the old home trail ahead.

Henry Herbert Knibbs

No comments: