personal favorites / poetry collections… Letter from the End of the Twentieth Century (cd) by Joy Harjo / poem, music link & video

Joy Harjo

Letter from the End of the Twentieth Century (cd) – Joy Harjo and Poetic Justice

 
 
 

“A Postcolonial Tale”

Every day is a reenactment of the creation story. We emerge from dense unspeakable material, through the shimmering power of dreaming stuff.

This is the first world, and the last.

Once we abandoned ourselves for television, the box that separates the dreamer from the dreaming. It was as if we were stolen, put into a bag carried on the back of a whiteman who pretends to own the earth and the sky. In the sack were all the people of the world. We fought until there was a hole in the bag.

When we fell we were not aware of falling. We were driving to work, or to the mall. The children were in school learning subtraction with guns, although they appeared to be in classes.

We found ourselves somewhere near the diminishing point of civilization, not far from the trickster’s bag of tricks.

Everything was as we imagined it. The earth and stars, every creature and leaf imagined with us.

The imagining needs praise as does any living thing. Stories and songs are evidence of this praise.

The imagination conversely illumines us, speaks with us, sings with us.

Stories and songs are like humans who when they laugh are indestructible.

No story or song will translate the full impact of falling, or the inverse power of rising up.

Of rising up.

 
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A link to Harjo’s performance of “She Had Some Horses” from the recording.

 
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Video of Harjo reading “Fear Poem”

~ by samofthetenthousandthings on May 9, 2012.