The sheets of night mist travel a long valley.
I know why you came at sundown in a scarf mist.
What was it we touched asking nothing and asking all ?
How many times can death come and pay back what we saw?
In the oath of the sod, the lips that swore,
In the oath of night mist, nothing and all,
A riddle is here no man tells, no woman.
The sunset swept
To the valley's west, you remember.
The frost was on.
A star burnt blue.
We were warm, you remember,
And counted the rings on a moon.
The sunset swept
To the valley's west
And was gone in a big dark door of stars.
Am I the river your white birds fly over?
Are you the green valley my silver channels roam?
The two of us a bowl of blue sky day time
and a bowl of red stars night time?
Who picked you
out of the first great whirl of nothings
and threw you here?
The wind is carrying me round the sky;
The wind is carrying me round the sky.
My body is here in the valley —
The wind is carrying me round the sky.
This valley is not ours, nor these mountains,
Nor the names we give them — they belong,
They, and this sweep of sun-washed air,
Desert and hill and crumbling earth.
To those who have lain here long years
And felt the soak of the sun
Through the red sand and crumbling rock,
Till even their bones were part of the sun-steeped valley;
How many years we know not, nor what names
They gave to antelope, wolf, or bison.
To prairie dog or coyote.
To this hill where we stand,
Or the moon over your shoulder . . .
Let us build a monument to Time
That knows all, sees all, and contains all,
To whom these bones in the valley are even as we are: