We stood on the rock

We remember, we remember
Those sublime songs of Dakota
Rushing hooves of wild buffalo
Calloused tears and fragile fears
When we held ourselves as each other’s dears

When dancing water met with bovine oil
And siblings from afar came across the hill
We dug our heels deep in weary soil
One people who would not be still

Into these fields we staggered blue
As their tanks and rubber bullets slowed our paces
Phallic batons took their dreadful cue
From hooded men with hidden faces

They ordered us back and put up wires
They said they had come to make all things better
With jobs and dollars and ivory spires
The old promises of the wounded tinkerer

Black Snake must make his way, they said
Our lands were dead and mute
Their machines purred and thrummed and fed
On the very music they sought to refute

We knelt in stinging tears and cried
As yellow cranes sliced our mother red
A surgical operation to make abide
That which was never even dead

Their cameras turned away – our stories postponed
The dogs were set on us – our honour dethroned
The skies coughed with smoke – our visions abused
Our bodies were tallied – our power refused

So we poured a libation of limbs
And danced and laughed and swayed
We became like water, flowing defiant hymns
Unstable ghosts, form delayed

We could not be killed; we could not be set straight
We were a murmuration of unholy stirring
We were thick; we were many, and downright apostate
Every gesture was a perverse gathering

We were there to bleed, to shed old hides
To tell the tales of stone, prairie and Sioux
Our skins were a wordless prayer, a choir of haunting guides
When they struck our bodies we melted through

Their victory lay with utterly containing us,
In tired halos of their own making
But we held on to our kin, the open plains unctuous  
A victory nobler than winning

We knew the pollination songs of bees
We knew the sacredness of a handful of soil
We knew the nobility of water and trees
We knew their own eyes did not weep oil

Hand in hand we stood on the rock
Drunken children of returning water
We stood for daughters and sons not yet flocked
Their own happily ever after

Never forget, we urged ourselves as many suns set
Never forget! – our wounds yelled this anthem
Never forget this day when each other we met
To remember is to overcome

And we remember, we remember
Those sublime songs of Dakota
Rushing hooves of wild buffalo
Calloused tears and fragile fears
When we held ourselves as each other’s dears

When dancing water met with bovine oil
And siblings from afar came across the hill
We dug our heels deep in weary soil
One people who would not be still