GHOSTS MEN IN NEW MEXICO Mountains blanket-wrapped Round a white hearth of desert-- While the sun goes round And round and round the desert, The mountains never get up and walk about. They can't, they can't wake. They camped and went to sleep In the last twilight Of Indian gods; And they can't wake. Indians dance and run and stamp-- No good. White men make gold-mines and the mountains unmake them In their sleep. The Indians laugh in their sleep From fear, Like a man when he sleeps and his sleep is over, and he can't wake up, And he lies like a log and screams and his scream is silent Because his body can't wake up; So he laughs from fear, pure fear, in the grip of the sleep. A dark membrane over the will, holding a man down Even when the mind has flickered awake; A membrane of sleep, like a black blanket. We walk in our sleep, in this land, Somnambulist wide-eyed afraid. We scream for someone to wake us And our scream is soundless in the paralysis of sleep, And we know it. The Penitentes lash themselves till they run with blood In their efforts to come awake for one moment; To tear the membrane of this sleep ... No good. The Indians thought the white man would awake them ... And instead, the white men scramble asleep in the mountains, And ride on horseback asleep forever through the desert, And shoot one another, amazed and mad with somnambulism, Thinking death will awaken something ... No good. Born with a caul, A black membrane over the face, And unable to tear it, Though the mind is awake. Mountains blanket-wrapped Round the ash-white hearth of the desert; And though the sun leaps like a thing unleashed in the sky They can't get up, they are under the blanket. Taos. AUTUMN AT TAOS Over the rounded sides of the Rockies, the aspens of autumn, The aspens of autumn, Like yellow hair of a tigress brindled with pins. Down on my hearth-rug of desert, sage of the mesa, An ash-grey pelt Of wolf all hairy and level, a wolf's wild pelt. Trot-trot to the mottled foot-hills, cedar-mottled and pinon; Did you ever see an otter? Silvery-sided, fish-fanged, fierce-faced whiskered, mottled. When I trot my little pony through the aspen-trees of the canyon, Behold me trotting at ease betwixt the slopes of the golden Great and glistening-feathered legs of the hawk of Horus; The golden hawk of Horus Astride above me. But under the pines I go slowly As under the hairy belly of a great black bear. Glad to emerge and look back On the yellow, pointed aspen-trees laid one on another like feathers, Feather over feather on the breast of the great and golden Hawk as I say of Horus. Pleased to be out in the sage and the pine fish-dotted foothills, Past the otter's whiskers, On to the fur of the wolf-pelt that strews the plain. And then to look back to the rounded sides of the squatting Rockies, Tigress brindled with aspen Jaguar-splashed, puma-yellow, leopard-livid slopes of America. Make big eyes, little pony At all these skins of wild beasts; They won't hurt you. Fangs and claws and talons and beaks and hawk-eyes Are nerveless just now. So be easy. Taos. SPIRITS SUMMONED WEST England seems full of graves to me, Full of graves. Women I loved and cherished, like my mother; Yet I had to tell them to die. England seems covered with graves to me, Women's graves. Women who were gentle And who loved me And whom I loved And told to die. Women with the beautiful eyes of the old days, Belief in love, and sorrow of such belief. " Hush, my love, then, hush. Hush, and die, my dear! " Women of the older generation, who knew The full doom of loving and not being able to take back. Who understood at last what it was to be told to die. Now that the graves are made, and covered; Now that in England pansies and such-like grow on the graves of women; Now that in England is silence, where before was a moving of soft-skirted women, Women with eyes that were gentle in olden belief in love; Now then that all their yearning is hushed, and covered over with earth. England seems like one grave to me. And I, I sit on this high American desert With dark-wrapped Rocky Mountains motionless squatting around in a ring, Remembering I told them to die, to sink into the grave in England, The gentle-kneed women. So now I whisper: Come away, Come away from the place of graves, come west,