National Poetry Month

In an effort to support National Poetry Month, a few of the most recent posts have been poems. Some original, some "classic", they are meant to express the value of poetry in the making of memes, or ways of thinking about events, places, things.

The following is "The Bear's Song", a Zuni chant about which it was said "Whoever can sing this one is admitted forever to the friendship of the bears.":

I have taken the woman of beauty 

For my wife;

I have taken her from her friends.

I hope her kinsmen will not come

And take her away from me.

I will be kind to her.

Berries, berries I will give her from the hill

And roots from the ground.

I will do everything to please her.

For her I made this song and for her I sing it.

Now figure out how to sing that song in the Zuni tradition and you too can be a friend of the bears. Notice, though, that in order to have peace with the bears one must care for, almost dote on, one's wife.

Van Doren/Lapolla, A Junior Anthology of World Poetry (1929)