The Red Wolf

Over the heart of the west, the Taos desert Circles an eagle, And it’s dark between me and him.

The sun, as he waits a moment, huge and liquid Standing without feet on the rim of the far-off mesa Says: Look for a last long time then! Look! Look well! I am going. So he pauses and is beholden, and straightway is gone.

And the Indian, in a white sheet Wrapped to the eyes, the sheet bound close on his brows, Stands saying: See, I’m invisible! Behold how you can’t behold me! The invisible in its shroud!

Now that the sun has gone, and the aspen leaves And the cotton-wood leaves are fallen, as good as fallen, And the ponies are in corral, And it’s night.

Why, more has gone than all these; And something has come. A red wolf stands on the shadow’s dark red rim.

Day has gone to dust on the sage-grey desert Like a white Christus fallen to dust from a cross; To dust, to ash, on the twilit floor of the desert.

And a black crucifix like a dead tree spreading wings; Maybe a black eagle with its wings out Left lonely in the night In a sort of worship.

And coming down upon us, out of the dark concave Of the eagle’s wings, And the coffin-like slit where the Indians’ eyes are, And the absence of cotton-wood leaves, or of aspen, Even the absence of dark-crossed donkeys: Come tall old demons, smiling The Indian smile, Saying: How do you do, you pale-face?

I am very well, old demon. How are you?

Call me Harry if you will, Call me Old Harry says he. Or the abbreviation of Nicolas, Nick. Old Nick, maybe.

Well, you’re a dark old demon, And I’m a pale-face like a homeless dog That has followed the sun from the dawn through the east Trotting east and east and east till the sun himself went home, And left me homeless here in the dark at your door. How do you think we’ll get on, Old demon, you and I?

You and I, you pale-face, Pale-face you and I Don’t get on.

Mightn’t we try?

Where’s your God, you white one? Where’s your white God?

He fell to dust as the twilight fell, Was fume as I trod The last step out of the east.

Then you’re a lost white dog of a pale-face, And the days now dead....

Touch me carefully, old father, My beard is red.

Thin red wolf of a pale-face, Thin red wolf, go home.

I have no home, old father, That’s why I come.

We take no hungry stray from the pale-face ...

Father, you are not asked. I am come. I am here. The red-dawn-wolf Sniffs round your place. Lifts up his voice and howls to the walls of the pueblo, Announcing he’s here.

The dogs of the dark pueblo Have long fangs ...

Has the red wolf trotted east and east and east From the far, far other end of the day To fear a few fangs?

Across the pueblo river That dark old demon and I Thus say a few words to each other

And wolf, he calls me, and red. I call him no names. He says, however, he is Star-Road. I say, he can go back the same gait.

As for me ... Since I trotted at the tail of the sun as far as ever the creature went west, And lost him here, I’m going to sit down on my tail right here And wait for him to come back with a new story. I’m the red wolf, says the dark old father. All right, the red dawn wolf I am. Taos.