Original Poem: A Stage Indian

A Stage Indian

History offered her no hiding place
From where the fingers of a dead white God
Upon the throat of her red bloodied race
Had tried to break her neck into a nodd.

Returning to the lands her people sold,
As nanny to a girl whilst wealthy sons
Groped her with "Pocahantas! Where's that gold?",
She cast the die that rolls like redmen's bones.

Though there was blood still dripping from the rock,
The knee-wound of her folk red white and bruised,
She had had foodstamps, not a tomahawk,
And now wears shameful feathers to amuse
Them. She is calm. The buffalo bends to feed
And bears in its huge heart a raw stampede.