NATIVE VISION: Ode to the Spirit and Native Soul by Walter Alfredo Martinez (1948-2006)

Ode to the Spirit and Native Soul by Walter Alfredo Martinez (1948-2006)

Dearest one . . .
So you have disappeared
So you have gone and left me
Here on usurped holy lands
And desecrated burial grounds
You have gone and left me dear
Like the wisp of blue smoke
Lost in the firmament
You have gone and left me dear
Graced by your mystical designs

Dearest one . . .
So you have disappeared
So you have gone and left me
Here on the crumbling ramparts
Of an expiring Twentieth Century
Crisscrossing the twisted mind
Immersed in the tortured soul
Of a dismembered and proliferating humanity!

Here down the streets
Made of asphalt and glass
In a great uproar of steel and cement
And an endless onslaught
Of faces and noises and voices
That rush through the vortex
Of my confused and bloody historical roots
Of my uprooted and hysterical drunk life
The song of this wandering half-breed
Tortured poisoned mangled half-blind
Is like the Eagle guiding the Swan
To the majestic arch of your brow

Dearest one . . .
So you have disappeared
So you have gone and left me
Like the trickle of a weary river
Lost in the blue vastness of the sea
You have gone and left me dear

All alone I have dwelled
In your moist soiled darkness
All alone I have awaited
In the spiraling echoes
Of your sweet conch shell
Circumscribed by the noble trade route
Of your glorious and clandestine enterprise

Dearest one . . .
Here almost five hundred years after
Veni vidi vici shifted you place
In a great realignment of fate
In a thunderous a clash of blood
And songs and semen for land
In and out of the ever darkest of ages
Your warriors once again people this land
Like stars the sky in the wake of the sun
And like an omniscient comet
Caressing my face in the darkness
Your voyaging soul passes through mine
Above our tenuous and tortured bloodline
Past the inexorable historical deadline
Of our true Manifest Destiny:
To mingle beneath and nourish this land
With our blood and our war weary bones
And to bloom like shoots of the sun
In festive song of corn water and lime

Dearest one . . .
So you have disappeared
So you have gone and left me
In your trails of tears and blood
Rivers of flowers and love songs!
You have gone and left me dear
Blessed by your mystical chants

Oh in time in time I will dance
And I will sing with clarity
Like an exalted Indian
Ablaze in the skies!

My long feather headdress
And my lovingly painted face
Like the fan of the luminous peacock
Will span forth to the four corners of the night!

And yes the serpent will grow wings
And it will uncoil itself in the desert dust
And it will recoil itself in the azure skies
For your arrowhead to strike its bullseye
And then form the great arch to your house
And once again you will distribute
The sweet fruits of these lands
Like the rivers distribute the earth
That flows to nourish the source of this life
That rose from the grace of the sea
To depart through your wistful pupil
In a distant reflection of magic and bliss …