WINDSINGER

Gary Smith died of a broken heart---the docters called it multiple sclerosis; it was a broken heart for no-one would look and see.



WINDSINGER

Windsinger, ride! Windsinger, ride! Windsinger, ride!
Nit C Hi Hatatih, Nit C Hi Hatatih, ride!

A young Navajo came riding,
While at his back set the bleeding desert sun;
He sought his name upon the mountain,
From the wise man, Nagi-Khan.

Nagi-Khan was such an old man,
And his eyes were filled with silence,
The silence passed from the ages,
When the spirits first walked and breathed upon the land.

The old man smiled at the boy,
And spoke with the strength of ten-thousand desert winds;
"Ride the Four Winds of the mountain;
Wake, and see, and think, and speak ---Windsinger!"

He was carried North from the mountain,
To the land of the Bear, and silent, frozen faces;
The bear sat and watched the eagle,
Whose talens had been tangled in the darkness.

The eagle tried to stretch his wings,
And to tear himself free from the darkness;
But his people were all sleeping,
And not one person cared to awake and cut him free.

The boy breathed deeply from the winds,
And sang with words that struck like burning spears!
"Hear your empty lives of deafness!
Awake now! Cant you see the danger?"

He was carried by the wind to the Southland,
Where the Lion and the Llama crawled on bloated bellies;
Thier eyes were only blackened sockets,
And the children tried to run while rickets swelled their knees.

The rich would feast and make their speeches;
Tomorrow shall bring the needed changes;
But their speeches were all empty,
And the hungry children groaned til their parents could not sleep.

Then the groaning changed into a roar,
The roar began to thunder and the winds began to scream;
"Dont let the children suffer!
Make all the people wake and see---Windsinger!"

He was carried to the east across the ocean,
To a place where the Dragon spewed its venom on the land;
He saw the vacant stares of millions,
Hungry stares that held no hope for food in empty hands.

The Dragon crouched before the Eagle,
That had gorged itself on darkness,
That had slept itself to weakness,
In whose eyes grew dim the light that could still make all men free.

The spirits moved upon the Winds,
Till the voices of the ages began to echo in his ears:
"Ride again among your people;
Make them wake, and see, Windsinger!"

Windsinger wrode amung his people,
Singing in the cities, the suburbs, and the ghettoes;
He sang to his brothers in the hogans,
In the squaler of the reservations.

But the people would not listen;
And the children danced their frenzied dances,
As the neon whirled, and flashed, and blinded;
And poison-bearing clouds hung like incense in the air.

The boy sang out his broken heart,
Then with sorrow in his eyes he rode slowly to the West.
"Dance while you sleep, my people;
The songs that I sing have no meaning for your ears"

But as he rode he heard a rumbling,
For a few had woken and turned to raise their faces;
They came forth from the darkened ghettos,
From the cities, and off the reservations.

A few had stopped to hear the singing,
And awakened from the slumber of the many;
Each one raised a burning spear,
With which to pierce the darkness and let forth the shining light.

The winds begin to move and sing.
Till the valleys echoed with a hundred rolling songs;
The man rode to his sacred mountain,
To wake, and see, and think, and speak---Windsinger!



Phoenix Journal: The Crucifixion of the Phoenix, Journal No. 12, pages 193/197.