when we knew, as a people
that the Universe was alive
when we knew as a people that the Universe was alive that each planet and knoll had a spirit that lives and breathes the way we do when we knew as a people that the Universe lives that the wind is a being the cottonwood has a soul and that the river remembers the celestial whole from which she was born when we knew as a people that the earth was holy the stars, holy the sun, holy the holy moonlight and soft midnight breeze when we held holy the feet and eyes beautifully bare upon the earth native, innate and inseparably holy messages written in the grass the singing brook at dusk when we knew as a people, what we knew, it was before the time we conceived the world as machine a mathematical anomaly without soul or divinity before we declared ultimate superiority completion! "we have reached the ends of human knowledge" they said, and i still pray for science to remember the infinitude of creation the still music of the milky way standing on the edge of the churning, balancing inconceivably complex spring of life, light & time she speaks to me: we know nothing she says, we know nothing.
✧ ✧ ✧
“I don’t blame the white people for their genius to transmit power through their many kinds of machines. But I am not impressed with these machines. They are crude mechanical contraptions that may break down. We Hopis don’t need them. We know how to manifest our powers — the same powers — without machines. I will tell you about these powers and how the stars help us. It won’t do any good. For our First World was destroyed because the people became evil, then the Second World, and the Third World. Now we are on the Fourth World and we have become evil too and it will be destroyed. But let me tell you. Without my people, without any people left in the world at all, I will still conduct my ceremony, singing and praying to the sun to project his power by silent vibrations so that we may continue our life on the next, Fifth World. Thus I will fulfill my ordained duty.” ~ excerpt from Pumpkin Seed Point: Being Within the Hopis, by Frank Waters, a quote translated as spoken by Don Qochhongva in the 1960’s.
✧ ✧ ✧
