Rita Bouvier: Nakamowin’sa kahkiyaw ay’sînôwak kici / Wordsongs for all human beings
Posted: June 1, 2013 Filed under: Cree, English, Rita Bouvier Comments Off on Rita Bouvier: Nakamowin’sa kahkiyaw ay’sînôwak kici / Wordsongs for all human beings
Gabriel Dumont, Métis Leader, photographed by Orlando Scott Goff, around 1886-1888
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Rita Bouvier ( Île-à-la-Crosse (Sakittawak), Saskatchewan )
that was a long time ago, and here we are today
.
that was a long time ago
and here we are today
.
listen, listen
the heart of the land beats
.
our children curious
as all children are
will ask the right questions
.
why does a nation take up arms
in a battle knowing it will lose?
knowing it will lose
.
listen, listen
the heart of the land beats
.
when the long night turns to day
remember, hope is the morning
a songbird’s prayer
. . .
I am created
(for my father, Emile)
.
I am created by a natural bond
between a man and a woman,
but this one, is forever two.
one is white, the Other, red.
a polarity of being, absorbed
as one. I am nature with clarity.
.
against my body, white rejects red
and red rejects white. instinctively,
I have learned to love – I have learned to live
though the politics of polarity
is never far away. still, I am
waiting, waiting.
. . .
a spider tale
.
behind the shed
in the tall yellow grass
a cardboard box
is my make-believe home
no one can see me
but I can see
all
their comings
and goings
my auntie Albertine
is washing clothes today
and needs the power
of my long arms
and lanky legs
to haul pails and pails
of water from the lake
.
I watch
as she searches for me
mumbles something about
kihtimigan – that lazy one
walks back inside the house
and out again
calling my name
.
when I appear
out of nowhere
she looks relieved to see me
“nitânis, tânitê oma î kîtotîyin?”
“my daughter, where in the world have you been?”
I tell her –
I was here all along
.
what I don’t tell her is
that I have been spinning tales
trying to understand
the possibility of…
myself as a spider
all legs
travelling here and there
with disturbing speed
my preoccupation with food
my home a web
so intricate and fragile
yet strong as sinew
.
today I remembered
not as sure footed
as I would like to be
someone calling my name
I lost my footing
falling, falling
. . .
we say we want it all
.
we fight amongst ourselves
jealous, one of us is standing.
.
there are no celebrations
for brave deeds among the chaos, instead
.
we joing the banner call for rights
forgetting an idea from the past –
.
responsibility. we join the march
for freedom, forgetting an idea
.
from the past – peace keeping.
we say we want, want it all
.
a piece of the action we know destroys
our home – our relations with each other
.
we are mired so deep, drowning
in our own thinking, thinking
.
we too could have it all, if only…
if only we could see ourselves
Louis Riel’s two children, Jean-Louis and Angélique, ages 6 and 5, photographed at Steele and Wings studio in Winnipeg, 1888
.
Riel is dead, and I am alive
.
I listen passively while strangers
claim monopoly of the truth.
one claims Riel is hero
while the other insists Riel was mad.
.
I can feel a tension rising, a sterile talk
presenting the life of a living people,
sometime in eighteen eighty five.
now, some time in nineteen ninety five
.
a celebration of some odd sort.
I want to scream. listen you idiots,
Riel is dead! and I am alive!
instead, I sit there mute and voiceless.
.
the truth unravelling, as academics
parade their lines, and cultural imperialists
wave their flags. this time the gatling gun
is academic discourse, followed
.
by a weak response of political rhetoric.
all mumbo-jumbo for a past that is
irreconcilable. this much I know
when I remember – I remember
.
my mother – her hands tender, to touch
my grandmother – her eyes, blue, the sky
my great grandmother – a story, a star gazer
who could read plants, animals and the sky.
. . .
that’s three for you
.
a young man came to me one day wanting
to understand me – the distance between
separate worlds, his and mine, his and mine.
surely, he begged, we could forsake the past
for the future, yours and mine, yours and mine.
.
I listened intently trying to find
the right words to say, to reassure him
my intentions, telling my story – the same.
I told him perhaps the past remembered
holds our future, yours and mine, yours and mine.
.
I wish it was easy to forget
as it is writing this poem for you.
I wish I could believe, I wish we could
break this damn cycle of separate worlds.
I wish I wish I wish. that’s three for you.
. . .
last night at Lydia’s
.
Celtic toe-tapping fiddle
Red River jigging rhythm
runs in my veins
a surge like lightning
.
that testosterone
in the mix tonight.
ohhhh, it feels good
to be alive
.
plaid shirted, tight blue jeans
good-looking, knows it kind-a-man
you hurt my eyes
.
pony-tailed, dark skinned
women in arm kind-a-man
your hurt my eyes
.
rugged, canoe-paddling
handsome kind-a-man
you hurt my eyes
.
muscle busting, v-necked
silver buckled kind-a-man
you hurt my eyes
.
cool leathered, scotch-sipping
drinking kind-a-man
you hurt my eyes
.
quiet wire-rimmed
spectacled kind-a-man
you hurt my eyes
.
you – you – you –
holding my hand kind-a-man
ohhhh, you hurt my eyes
Shane Yellowbird_Cree country-music singer from Alberta
.
hand on hand
.
we made a pact but you were only three.
I was so much older I should have known
better. I promised then to take care of you
as long as my hands were bigger than yours.
.
in return, you promised to take care of
me, when your hands would grow bigger than mine.
today, you came to me wanting to measure
your hand against mine; I said, go away
.
your hands growing way, way too fast for me.
just then, a thick fog descended across
the street. you ran into it curious
unafraid, unaware you were disappearing
.
with every step you took. I ran after you
trying as best as I could to hold on
with you in sight, letting go at each step.
hand on hand we made a pact, you were three.
. . .
wordsongs of a warrior
.
what is poetry? how do I explain
this affliction to my mother
in the language she understands,
words strung together, woven
pieces of memory, naming
and telling the truth in a way
that dances, swings and sways
.
why the subject of my poetry
is sometimes difficult to deliver
why my subjects are terrorized
even controversial, why
the subjects are the essence
of my own being – close to the bone.
.
nakamowin’sa wordsongs
kahkiyaw ay’sînôwak kici for all human beings
ta sohkihtama kipimâsonaw to give strength on this journey
kitahtawî ayis êkwa one of these days, for sure now
kam’skâtonanaw we will find each other
. . .
when the silence breaks
.
I am a reluctant speaker
violence not just a physical thing.
.
words are one thing
I can hold them in my hand
later embroider them
like you do fine silk
on white deer hide
if I want.
but dead silence
that’s another matter
there is nothing to hold on to
like the falling
before you awaken.
.
I imagine it this way, simply
kitahtawî êkwa
one of these days now
when the silence breaks
the deer will stop in their tracks
pausing eyes wide
the wolverine will roll over and over
on the hillside, and
you will hear my voice
as if for the first time
distant and then melodic
and you will recognize it
as your very own.
kitahtawî êkwa
. . .
a ritual for goodbye
(in memory of Albertine)
.
walking the shoreline
this crisp spring morning
in our matching
red-line rubber boots
my cousin and I
are reminiscing
the days gone by
.
I remember first
one early spring
the water so low
we could get
from one island
to the next
our clothes piled high
over our heads
.
she remembers then
no human debris
like there is now
just the odd
piece of driftwood
she reminded me
we wondered then
where it came from
a guessing game
.
walking the shoreline
this crisp spring morning
our walk is certain
clinging close
to what we know best
this shoreline, this bond,
we don’t speak of the fact
that our aunt is dying
. . .
earthly matters
.
when I came to your grave site
late last fall, a chill in the air,
I was feeling sorry for myself.
I came looking for a sign
one might say it was –
guidance on earthly matters.
.
lifting my face skyward
I found nothing but blue sky.
I searched the horizon,
it was then I discovered
a la Bouleau in the distance.
I smiled, recalling
that walk we took
through the new cemetery
on a break from city life.
you didn’t want to be buried
near the saints anyway,
roped in, in a chain-link fence.
you were pointing out,
as if it were a daily business
family plots here and there.
best of all, you claimed
you had selected the ideal plot
for yourself and your family,
a la Bouleau in the distance.
. . .
All poems © Rita Bouvier – from her Thistledown Press collection entitled Papîyâhtak. In the Cree language Papîyâhtak means: to act in a thoughtful way, a respectful way, a joyful way, a balanced way.
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Rita Bouvier is a journeyer who searches along the way. Her poems are unafraid to take chances; they are complex in emotion, unsparing in intellect. Papîyâhtak includes a number of poems written for actors in The Batoche Musical which was conceived and developed by a theatre and writers’ collective and performed at Back to Batoche Days in Batoche, Saskatchewan. The poem That was a long time ago, and we are here today was inspired by an essay written by South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko.
. . .
Gabriel Dumont (1837 – 1906) was a leader of the Métis people in what is now the province of Saskatchewan. It was Dumont who brought the exiled Louis Riel (1844 – 1885) back to Canada to pressure Canadian authorities to recognize the Métis as a Nation. Sharpshooter with a rifle, Dumont was Riel’s chief right-hand man and he led the Métis forces in the North-West Resistance (or Rebellion – as Ottawa-centric history books described it) of 1885.
Louis Riel was one of the towering Hero figures of Canadian history. For more on Riel – and a letter/poem he wrote to Sir John A. Macdonald, his ideological opposite – (along with a letter/poem addressed to Macdonald by contemporary Métis poet Marilyn Dumont) – click the following ZP link for January 11th, 2012:
https://zocalopoets.com/category/poets-poetas/marilyn-dumont/
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Zócalo Poets 