The hawk is hungry & other stories / D'Arcy McNickle ; edited by Birgit Hans

Third Floor

PS3525.A2844 H38 1992

They came here first : the epic of the American Indian / by D'Arcy McNickle
Third Floor
E58 .M18

"Not all music is meant to be beautiful." -Sam Riley in Control.

Quite the opposite actually, sometimes music, poetry, art is meant to convey the deepr, darker sides of human existence. To explore fear, paranoia, neurosis in an effort to express isolation, alienation, self-deprecation and why? Is it to serve as some selfish, burrowing need within a person to root out all the lingering traces of innate evil which so many philosophers and later, psychologists, exist within each and every person. But, to an extent, this sentiment would depend chiefly on the artist or the prime mover of the work. They may have their own particular intentions for bearing their soul to the solitude, at least temporary solitude of the page. But even so, there must be some sense of desparation that the author would feel toward warning the rest of humanity of the same dangers with which their soul has been affected. Think of The Plague by Camus which on one level, the surface level, deals with the plague and ensuing events of quarantine in the small town of Oran, Morrocco. Naturally, the events and occurrence make great press, as they still do in our times. Indeed, whether through truth of fiction, we could find this story rather entertaining in the same way that a horror novel or true crime writings would be. But we gain so much else from a novel like this one when reading between the lines, working the analysis and uncovering harrowing truths about the human condition.

the crow's feet follow you morning

after morning, you portray as being younger

still to those who seem to be around you,

but they're often party favors, with no room

for weak types, no room for angels,

but instead, the time to bolster needs has arisen,

when autumn sets in, the retaining wall flattened,

you hover beneath the crabapple tree looking

for a bite, the tart pulp smeared on your lips.

Rough Draft...

Standing by the wreck of the Missouri,
she and I were prehistoric, gazing upon the flight of birds,
they whorled up in patterns, let loose their wings,
and fell upon air pockets above the water,
the catfish flopped up on the rocks above the banks,
their fat bellies pulling them back down into the muddy deeps,
the otters on the far banks, burrowed farther into earth,
the autumn breezes beginning to send their signal,
the leadening weight of the season an echo to all passing creatures.

We dreamed for a moment of a life that never was,
but could have been, but might never be, unless we made it so,
the waters, untouched now by clipper, or man, and buoyant,
a tableau, millions of brushstrokes, thousands of thoughts to the wind.
Alone, the waters would pass as they always have, the southbound
current steady at five knots if there were a clock to measure it.
But with us, the river harkened itself, bearing down upon us
in the same way heaven can always be planted, here, now, now.

And in the hours that followed, the silence of that lilting river,
its slow plod, as we drive home in that same silence of which we shared,
fell into our rhythms for just awhile, in the quiet chir of the crickets
somwhere on shore, somewhere in the weeds, the grasshoppers
leaping around cornstalks, the long cut of the skyline, thick beds
of clouds, bordered by the dying sunlight, licking the heavens
a dull gold, a deepening sleeve of orange, the end of all wars,
that now would be the peace that we had promised each other,
that nothing need be said, in this prehistory, by the wreck of the Missouri.