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Book Two
What Happened: Questions and Answers
prologue
1
The town lights are glittering
in the sudden winter dark
far below -- in the room, light
comes only from the fi re -- fl ame shapes
waver in the plate glass.
Much Pueblo pottery. Fine
Navajo rugs on the walls
and fl oors; Washington Matthews'
vast work on Navajo rites
lies half in quivering shadow,
where it dominates a sprawl
of papers, books, old pamphlets
on Southwest Indians; talk
has shifted from the ghetto
riots -- it's 'sixty-seven --
to travel plans: how our friends
will go to Jemez Pueblo
for the Corn Festival dance,
and we? `Weather permitting,
I'll go to Meeker,' I say:
the associational
blank around `Meeker' contrasts
pitifully with Jemez
and its masked dancers moving
in the cold under starlight.
`Meeker ...?' and `Where is Meeker?'
`Meeker's over the mountains,
I've not been there yet, just read