From Eye of Witness (2): "From a Shaman’s Notebook"

please note. a list of postings after january 12, 2012 can be found here
[As a preliminary to what would later become Technicians ofthe Sacred, I gathered as a section of my then magazine, Poems from the Floating World (1962-1963), a series of poems that were workings on my own grounds of poems that I had begun to assemble from a range of largely tribal/oral cultures.  There was no real claim here to any kind of neo-shamanism on my own part except perhaps for the intuition, already there, that a crucial tool of historical shamanism was a relation to a form of languaging that, if not poetry in our sense, was as close to poetry as we were likely to get.  I would be less than honest as well if I didn’t allow that the move herein to an experimental ethnopoetics grew out of my earlier infatuation with “deep image” & the surrealisms, Dadaisms, & romanticisms that came before it.  In the book I’m now preparing with Heriberto Yépez, Eye of Witness: A Jerome Rothenberg Reader (Black Widow Press), that progression in my own work, with much found but little abandoned along the way, has played a crucial role. (J.R.)]

               Perhaps the art which we are seeking is the key
               to every former art: a solomonic key that will
               open all the mysteries.
                    Hugo Ball

               Mighty magic is a mother.
                   Robert Creeley

               We are all the same man.
                    Paul Cezanne

A n   I n v o c a t i o n   t o   t h  e   R a i n

Dad a da da
Dad a da da
Dad a da da
Da kata kai

Ded o ded o

Ded o ded o
Ded o ded o
Da kata kai

                 (Australian)

T h e   S e v e n

They are 7 in number, just 7

In the terrible depths they are 7
Bow down, in the sky they are 7

In the terrible depths, the dark houses

They swell, they grow tall

They are neither female nor male
They are a silence heavy with seastorms
They bear off no women their loins are empty of children
They are strangers to pity, compassion is far from them
They are deaf to men’s prayers, entreaties can’t reach them
They are horses that grow to great size that feed on mountains
They are the enemies of our friends
They feed on the gods
They tear up the faces of evil they are the faces of evil

They are 7 they are 7 they are 7 times 7

In the name of Heaven let them be torn from our sight
In the name of the Earth let them be torn from our sight

                                     (Mesopotamian)

G h o s t s  a n d  S h a d o w s

                            The soul is a dark forest.
                                       D.H. Lawrence

Ghosts in this forest, shadows

thrown back by the night
Or in daylight
       like bats that drink from our veins
       And hang from moist walls, in deep caves
Behind this green moss, these awful white stones
We pray to know who has seen them
       Shadows thrown back by the night
We pray to know who has seen them.

                                  (Pygmy)

T h e  K i l l e r

Careful: my knife drills your soul
          listen, whatever-your-name-is
          One of the wolf people
listen, I’ll grind your saliva into the earth
listen, I’ll cover your bones with black flint
listen,   "      "         "       "       "        "      feathers
listen,   "      "         "       "       "        "      rocks
Because you’re going where it’s empty
            Black coffin out on the hill
listen, the black earth will hide you,
            will find you a black hut
            Out where it’s dark, in that country
listen, I’m bringing a box for your bones
            A black box
            A grave with black pebbles
listen, your soul’s spilling out
listen, it’s blue
                                         (Cherokee Indian)

A  P o i s o n   A r r o w

Enough poison to make
your head spin, and chains
to pin you down, and once
they’ve shot the arrow
and once it lands, well
it’s just like the fly and the horse:
I mean a fly that’s bitten one horse
will damn sure go after another
And I mean too that this arrow’s
like a pregnant woman
                  Hungry for some meat
And even if it doesn’t break your skin
                   You die
And if it breaks it just a little bit
                   You die
And if it gets in and does its stuff
                   You die
And if it sort of touches you and drops right out
                    You die
        And as long as you stay out of my blood
        what do I care whose blood you get in
                   Kill him
        I won’t stand in the way

This is a fire that I’m setting off
And this is a fire that I’m lifting up
And this is a shadow that’s burning
And this is the sun that’s burning
Because the poison I’ve got is stronger than bullets
               And it’s louder than thunder
               And it’s hotter than fire
And what do I care who it gets, kill him!
               I won’t stand in the way
As long as you stay out of my blood

                                   (Nigeria, Hausa)

T h e   D e a d    H u n t e r    S p e a k  s   t h r o u g h

t h e  V o i c e   o f   a  S h a m a n

To be beyond you now, to feel
joy burning inside me when the sun
burns through the terrible sky
To feel joy in the new sun, aie!
in the sky’s curved belly

But restless more likely, restless

These flies swarm around me, dropping
eggs in the rotting collarbone,
into my eyes, their cold mouths moving
I choke on such horrors

And remembering the last fear, I remember
a dark rim of ocean, remembering
the last fear, the broken boat drifting,
drawing me into that darkness, aie!
Now the other side holds me

And I remember men’s fear in the boats

I see the snow forced into my door, fear’s
shadow over the hut, while my body
hung in the air, the door hidden, aie!
When I cried in fear of the snow

Horror stuck in my throat, the hut

walled me in, slowly the ice-floe broke
Horror choked me, the thin sky
quivered with sound, the voice
of the dark ice cracking, cold mornings

                        (Copper Eskimo)

T h e  S t a r s

For we are the stars. For we sing.

For we sing with our light.
For we are birds made of fire.
For we spread our wings over the sky.
Our light is a voice.
We cut a road for the soul
for its journey through death.
For three of our number are hunters.
For these three hunt a bear.
For there never yet was a time
when these three didn’t hunt.
For we face the hills with disdain.
This is the song of the stars.

                         (Algonquin Indian)