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350 Campo Santo at San Juan Come where the mesa’s lion-colored paws Set back the lordly Rio to the west, And I will show you sleep! Set round are magic mountains, blue on blue, That thin to wreathing veils and are exhaled By the out-breathing spirit of the universe In pulse of lilac light; Between them high stretched mesas, tombe tight, Whereon the gods Drum sullen thunder these hot afternoons Till the plumed clouds come up like eagles Dun-feathered, edged with white, With arrow lightnings sheath’d in their claws. A bow-shot nearer to the mesa’s edge, Pale huts that drink the sun; Long after dark their walls give back warm tones, The wine of light. Five centuries and more these walls Have been drawn out of dust by women’s hands—They too have drunk the sun, are dusky with it, Their white teeth give secret flashes, and their eyes, The very fibers of their blankets sparkle Clear red and yellow like stained glass. Sit here by the Cacique’s house And watch Lupita plastering a wall With dust that was some mother’s son, Mixed with the rain that fell, how many times, As women’s tears. This was their life; 351 A wind that rose and struggled with the dust And stilled to dust again. Such changes came as overtake These same stark mesas in a season’s range; Mere bloom of use and custom Our unregardful time has blown away. Where once the prayer-plume and the cloud-compelling drum Circled the pregnant fields, The five fiscales bear the village Saint, And still for rain the six Corn Maidens dance Round Mary Virgin in the market place. And then, their little dust makes room For the crepe-petalled argemony, A potshard and a penciled word Amado. . . . . Loved . . Full fed of life, what need To set a beggar’s bowl for scraps To round the measure of identity? If dust could feel, their dust had but come home To herd grass and to painted cup, To crisping frost and slender-footed rain, The great lord Sun returning from the South Clad in white beads and shell shield glittering.— And they are one with all they looked upon. Editor’s Notes AU 58; four typescripts, one clearly the last, with Austin’s name and that of her home in Santa Fe, Casa Querida. Campo Santo is a cemetery. San Juan is a pueblo near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Tombe is a ceremonial drum. Argemony or argemone is the plant prickly poppy. ...

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