Politics Is History Where the Spin Is Undecided

The second post I wrote for this blog was on a Stafford poem. He was insanely prolific, so I feel that I haven't really come to an appreciation for his work. But individual poems really amaze me. I feel this one is an incredible balancing act, measuring out the divides between people and somehow straddling them: Christian and Native, pacifist and jingoist, modern and ancient. 


I was thinking the other day about an acquaintance's inflammatory comment based on a wildly unfair quote from a certain blowhard political commentator. I was trying to puzzle out what made me so blindingly angry; I realized it was the smallness of mind and meanness of imagination. It's the inability to see beyond your own preconceptions and ego, the willful disallowing of any alternative points of view and ESPECIALLY the branding of anyone who goes against your credo as a malcontent and traitor.


Especially in polarizing times we most need this certain largesse, a magnanimity big enough to say, "I might be wrong and you may have a point. Come, let us reason together." And so, this.

Report to Crazy Horse

William Stafford

All the Sioux were defeated. Our clan   
got poor, but a few got richer.
They fought two wars. I did not
take part. No one remembers your vision   
or even your real name. Now   
the children go to town and like   
loud music. I married a Christian.


Crazy Horse, it is not fair
to hide a new vision from you.
In our schools we are learning
to take aim when we talk, and we have   
found out our enemies. They shift when   
words do; they even change and hide   
in every person. A teacher here says   
hurt or scorned people are places   
where real enemies hide. He says   
we should not hurt or scorn anyone,   
but help them. And I will tell you   
in a brave way, the way Crazy Horse   
talked: that teacher is right.


I will tell you a strange thing:
at the rodeo, close to the grandstand,   
I saw a farm lady scared by a blown   
piece of paper; and at that place   
horses and policemen were no longer   
frightening, but suffering faces were,   
and the hunched-over backs of the old.


Crazy Horse, tell me if I am right:
these are the things we thought we were   
doing something about.


In your life you saw many strange things,   
and I will tell you another: now I salute   
the white man’s flag. But when I salute   
I hold my hand alertly on the heartbeat   
and remember all of us and how we depend   
on a steady pulse together. There are those   
who salute because they fear other flags   
or mean to use ours to chase them:   
I must not allow my part of saluting   
to mean this. All of our promises,   
our generous sayings to each other, our   
honorable intentions—those I affirm   
when I salute. At these times it is like   
shutting my eyes and joining a religious
colony at prayer in the gray dawn   
in the deep aisles of a church.


Now I have told you about new times.   
Yes, I know others will report
different things. They have been caught   
by weak ways. I tell you straight
the way it is now, and it is our way,   
the way we were trying to find.


The chokecherries along our valley
still bear a bright fruit. There is good
pottery clay north of here. I remember
our old places. When I pass the Musselshell
I run my hand along those old grooves in the rock.