The Questioners

The sad sage-grey Dakota hills

That stood and watched me at my mapping-table

In spite of flies, stay with me; the great moaning

Of wind that walks that country day and night-

The years of famine and the years of blight

Are in that wind, and all the helpless anger

That men defrauded turn against themselves

Before they lift their rifles from their shelves.

And I have seen the ghosts of the Dakotahs,

Out of revenge on what white men have done,

Riding the Russian thistles through the dust-storms,

Burning the crops and cracking the earth with sun.

And I have heard the foxes on the hill

Barking a question; insects at the sill,

Drawn by my lamp, as they flung themselves at the flame,

Whirred with their wings no other name but my name.

I have stepped from farmhouse kitchens and been drowned

In the long empty of the summer nights

And seen the Northern Lights

Beam after beam shoot upward seeking me,

But I would not be found, and would not cry

Here! Here am I!

Or whisper from the ground.

For I knew I could not answer their hard questions

And better never heard and never found.

And yet I always hear and ponder the questions

Of the creatures of the country without trees,

But all the answers I know are wordy or bloody

Sick with swords or social disease,

And though my country silence answered nothing

And vigilance and patience are unsure

Ihave given my love to the askers of hard questions,

Since what discovers darkness is dark's cure.

E. L. Mayo

AUTUMN

By the drawn leaf, the ravaged flower,