from SOUTH DAKOTA SUITE, Séamas Carraher

for

Teresa Baburam

Wide open spaces

stun me.

i was born, tight

as a knot

in a country called hate

where words weave wounds

and it us war, endlessly,

on the hour.

There are no words

for emptiness.

Small birds puncture its skin

mercilessly.

Here the hand of man is on every field.

A cry comes up from the land.

In every field a crop, corn or soya.

There are no words

for a people

who have no home.

On Elm Street, South Dakota

the heat shaves the paintwork

from the timber houses,

thoughts fall like leaves

and settle in the dust.

Two squirrels eye me

mercilessly,

from above.

It is Sunday,

to the singing of the insects

and the greedy mosquitoes.

Once i had a soul

that sang from its tree in the heart of home.

Out here we are all swimming

for dry land

shipwrecked, like rats,

on the Plain.

Somehow this must be

our longing for a life

not yet

possible

the glory of the sunflower

this happiness that beats

everyone’s brains

into pulp

this stormlike silence.

Here now in the heart of hell:

this song of the Prairie.

America! must be a word

for something

struggling to wake

in the heart of

nowhere

to find yourself driving

without direction

and these highways stretch endlessly

neither inside nor out.

Oh, my soul,

there is not one road but many!

Not one dream here but a million!

Marching, marching endlessly

now all our longings

have

become

soundlessly,

silenced.

Leonard Peltier is still in prison.

i don’t hear anyone talking of it.

It seems to me the silence must be a great prison to us all.

Even the Great Plains have no room

to contain it.

We guard it at 65 miles an hour.

It seems to me this whole country

is a great prison of happiness

to its people.

It seems to me

only the poor people are dour

and distrustful

because they carry the secret of America’s happiness

like a great burden holding up the ‘free’ world.

Leonard Peltier must have committed crimes

against this happiness, I think.

i think, day after day

he must think,

“…none of us is getting out of this alive.”

i think endlessly in great engines

that carry me ruthlessly across

the prairie

how so much profit

can come from murder?

i think, surely, it should be past the time

when life unfolds

like on TV.

Later i thought,

it would be nice if someone talked about it,

weaving my way through the trailer-parks

and the children with their arms raised,

their mouths open

if suddenly a wind cut through the

impenetrable being of the corn!

If suddenly the people fell from their perches on

the edge of the Plain

if somehow the monetary system went bust

if the books refused to open any more

if the graves opened and all the dead could talk!

Listening to my self, between two continents,

with no nationality now that is not a lie,

it comes to me:

“Leonard Peltier in prison”

seems like a bitter word.

If only somehow a wind cut through the corn!

if somehow suddenly this woman

at the edge of the windscreen woke,

if it was no longer all just night

or hunger

or fear

then, love,

maybe

i would find myself home

the first ‘white’ man to recognise

the country of his birth

our blood worth more than

the price of a dollar

and this life without value?

A homeland for all in exile!

[…]

No matter where i am

i dream of the world to come

here there is no property

no title deed

to gnaw your bones into hunger

no house to unhome another with

nothing out of place that the

wind could destroy.

It’s not that i dream too much.

It’s more that, even after all this time,

i can still somehow feel

this ‘thing’ called

‘desire’

so that it’s only that here

so far away

two thousand miles up this uncharted river

of dust and debris

someone has put a fence

round me

someone is cutting my words

with wire!

My throat is choked with silence

everyone speaks in a strange

language

here in this first reservation town

when the car won’t go no more

this lump in my throat

is holding

my life in its hands

piteously,

like an infant.

We sleep,

my friend and i

beneath all the stars

where it is neither day nor night

in the land of our lovelessness

we sleep

wondering where the world

might be

when we wake up.

[…]

Wounded Knee.

All roads lead to this point,

a grave on a hill

eight tourists from New York

taking photographs.

i arrive a hundred and ten years

too late.

i do not know what to do

with the Irish girl’s tears

i have been entrusted with

they wrap round my own

but i am old

i am tired

as a man

i have forgotten how to weep

only as a child

could i have remembered

there is too much and

too little,

to grieve for.

At the bottom of the hill

an Indian asks five American dollars

for directions

for five dollars i’d need

the way out of here

for five dollars i’d need the answer

to a couple of questions.

He tells me his brother knows

many things

but i am my own brother

and i know little

in this world too:

”my brother is my purse.

My friend, my means for getting on.”

We are poor people

we have no brothers,

that’s capitalism.

Instead i think

these old people

do not like us

and how can i blame them?

i am new and shiny

and the roots of my life

feed on their dead

though i am not white nor black

just someone lost on the side of a road

also

it’s hard being without colour,

the humanness and less of it

hurts.

i thought then,

to be Irish

to be poor and Irish

is never to know where your dead lie buried

this world has become our graveyard

all its people are our brothers

we are ghosts

and the children of ghosts!

At Wounded Knee

it must be

the dying ends up easy.

It’s life that’s difficult.

The memory is no longer painful.

Only forgetfulness

this amnesia where we have forgotten

what it is,

this life!

Here is “the end of history” then.

It’s not glory nor greed,

to have travelled four thousand miles

two thousand of them in heat and dust

to sit numbed by the carelessness of history.

To win or lose

who gives a shit?

Still, in a corner of the graveyard

at Wounded Knee

a small child sleeps

a doll, half rabbit, half human,

stands sentry there

guarding her grave.

Oh, there must be a place,

a secret place,

where the almost

endless grief

of our losses

can find

a home.

A place

where we all

might belong. [… ]

Permission to republish portions of the poem and pictures of South Dakota kindly granted by author séamas carraher wretchedoftheearth@eircom.net

Séamas Carraher was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1956. He lives on the Ballyogan estate, in south County Dublin, Ireland, at present. Recent publications include poems in Bone Orchard Poetry, Istanbul Literary Review and Pemmican. Previously his work has been published in Left Curve (No. 13, 14 & 20), Compages, Poetry Ireland Review, and the Anthology of Irish Poetry.