There is a place in Montana where the grass stands up two feet,
Yellow grass, white grass, the wind
On it like locust wings & the same shine.
Facing what I think was south, I could see a broad valley
& river, miles into the valley, that looked black & then trees.
To the west was more prairie, darker
Than where we stood, because the clouds
Covered it; a long shadow, like the edge of rain, racing towards us.
We had been driving all day, & the day before through South Dakota
Along the Rosebud, where the Sioux
Are now farmers, & go to school, & look like everyone.
In the reservation town there was a Sioux museum
& 'trading post', some implements inside: a longbow
Of shined wood that lay in its glass case, reflecting light.
The walls were covered with framed photographs.
The Oglala posed in fine dress in front of a few huts,
Some horses nearby: a feeling, even in those photographs
The size of a book, of spaciousness.
I wanted to ask about a Sioux holy man, whose life
I had recently read, & whose vision had gone on hopelessly
Past its time: I believed then that only a great loss
Could make us feel small enough to begin again.
The woman behind the counter
Talked endlessly on; there was no difference I could see
Between us, so I never asked.

                                           The place in Montana
Was the Greasy Grass where Custer & the Seventh Cavalry fell,
A last important victory for the tribes. We had been driving
All day, hypnotized, & when we got out to enter
The small, flat American tourist center we began to argue.
And later, walking between the dry grass & reading plaques,
My wife made an ironic comment: I believe it hurt the land, not
Intentionally; it was only meant to hold us apart.
Later I read of Benteen & Ross & those who escaped,
But what I felt then was final: lying down, face
Against the warm side of a horse & feeling the lulls endlessly,
The silences just before death. The place might stand for death,
Every loss rejoined in a wide place;
Or it is rest, as it was after the long drive,
Nothing for miles but grass, a long valley to the south
& living in history. Or it is just a way of living
Gone, like our own, every moment.
Because what I have to do daily & what is done to me
Are a number of small indignities, I have to trust that
Many things we say to each other are not intentional,
That every indirect word will accumulate
Over the earth, & now, when we may be approaching
Something final, it seems important not to hurt the land.

Commentary

This is Carol Muske-Dukes reading “Rosebud” by Jon Anderson.

The poem “Rosebud” by the late poet Jon Anderson seems both filled with hurt and despair at the same time as it seems wide in scope; a hymn to history. It seems he is speaking to the land: in this case, one place in Montana. But this is not just any place in Montana—this is the site of the Battle of Little Bighorn, where on June 26th, 1876 General Custer and the 7th Cavalry were outnumbered and vanquished by Sitting Bull and the Sioux warriors.

This poem is about history and identity in that it is about, as Jon Anderson says, the “last important victory” of the tribes, for the tribes, and also about living in history. Or just about living, he says, how our own lives are gone, disappearing minute by minute. This poem lives in—as the poet says—two landscapes at once; or he implies that it is interior, the exterior, and he seeks to understand each one.

He longs to enter what he calls the “difference”—all difference, but can find no evidence of such, as the Sioux now seem entirely assimilated. The speaker is a white man, but he wants to feel the identity of the Sioux warrior as well as Custer. But he’s—more than anything, he wants to grasp the intent of the land itself as a vision: the vision of the holy man, whose life he’d been reading as he traveled, a holy man whose vision went on hopelessly past its time. The holy man may be Sitting Bull, who saw two great visions prior to the victory at Greasy Grass, as the Sioux called Little Bighorn. Sitting Bull and the Native Americans honored the land and the sky; revered them as the embodiments of the Great Spirit. The speaker of the poem feels this is forever and still alive as he and his wife walk in the grass and read plaques outside the Flag American Tour Center.

But she says something ironic to him, something that separates them in argument. And he says it hurts the land. The vision enters the poet again; he grasps at last that the Native American sense of oneness, of the holiness of the one, connects human nature to Earth, and is final as death. He does not dwell on his wife’s alienation from him, but rather imagines how each soldier and warrior died: their, in a sense, comforting last moments lying against the warm side of fallen horses as it breathes its last in the lulls, the silences before death. But the breathing before death, in a sense, is like our daily respiration. And the identity here is the history we share, and living together. Not an alienation. But thus, in his last lines, it now seems so important for us all not to hurt the land.

Commentator's Poem

Driving westward, the freeway lit by sun-in-smoke,
wildfire sky. Unsummoned, a kid’s waking dream
of a great wheel, all seats filled by personal gods:

the laughing jackal face, the thunderbird mother of
night, sure-shot Madonna, horror-boys & my fave, Janus—
all rocking in thought-cradles about the swan boats at

the bottom. Where the brakeman in the peter pan bandanna
(hiding his chemo-bald head) keeps the whole swirl running.
Stop spinning like that	the long ago voices called to me. I,

undiagnosed. I kept turning like a top, within sound spinning
outward from the diamond tooth of a zenith snake, that needle-
arm on vinyl lines. Now that Blue Danube score flows so fast that

the wheel cranks backward. Clouds part to reveal a holiness-in-snow,
thrown up. How I knelt in terror, dawn mass past, nine & saintish-mad,
about to cover the sacred wafer in icy white with these very hands now

clutching the lock-bar as we keep on rocking. More clouds, pink-lit like lip-
prints of the dying on glass, mirror. Lovers & trusted few once next to me,
“forever & ever” till they closed the coffin lids. Fire-on-fire like maternal
	circular logic

I followed away from the catechism god whose first proof was that he existed,
while she grew faster on pagan heights. Assassins, developers, woman-killers,
don't know from the palindrome of this hurt earth. So double-gazing Janus

stands up, risks falling off, to say s/he saw this coming. Look how flames
have overtaken the fairgrounds here. Pay no attention to these fireworks
revealing a sky’s lit-up gears, machine-y in its glass-tight interior. Stand on

     renegade heaven & turn—write it forth & back, as it just—
		                                                                              just keep turning.

• 

  Carol Muske-Dukes

  Carol Muske-Dukes (1945- ) was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and holds degrees from Creighton University and San Francisco State University. She is the author of eight poetry collections, including Blue Rose (2018), two essay collections, and four novels. Her honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, as well as a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress. She was appointed poet laureate of California in 2008. Muske-Dukes has taught at Columbia University, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the University of Virginia, the University of California, Irvine, and the New School. She is currently a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Southern California. Photo credit: Kelsey Muske

• 

  Jon Anderson

  Jon Anderson (1940-2007) was born in Somerville, Massachusetts. He attended Northeastern University and the University of Iowa. He is the author of several volumes of poetry, including Death & Friends (1970), which was nominated for a National Book Award. His work has been featured in several anthologies, and he was the recipient of a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, two awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Award. Anderson taught for nearly 30 years at the University of Arizona. Photo credit: Lois Shelton.

Related Resources

• “In sepia” by Jon Anderson (catalog record)
• “Blue rose” by Carol Muske-Dukes (catalog record)
• Carol Muske-Dukes (official website)