Analysis of Gahé Dzíł / Mountain Spirits
Circling around flames and dancing with the blazes
Encumbering sparks take flight into the night sky,
A swirling twinkle resembling a star crown
Moving into empty canopies resembling ghosts
A threshold colossal structure with rusty bells shakes
the sound of fire sings lingering beyond the flames
sent across the mountain and valleys
These spirits come from the mountains and move towards
the south, between the sacred narrow canyons,
The Sierra Madre Canyon walls sing in their echoes
A medicine reveals a stick and brings the wall down
For the Ndé—the people who wandered into night
Ascending towards the ending sky and onto the lost land
Losing their tongues and eyes they consume the mountain
Air and waters trying to heal all their lungs that bellowed
Outward against the slow breezes and heavy breaths
A hundred years the spirits protected them from
the sixteenth calvary who then believed, in all their hearts,
a good Injun was a dead Injun. Even then the spirits protected
the people for another twenty-seven years until they reached
—their forced destination
A place where cutting their hair died as the spirits watched
The people searched the underground catacombs of St. Augustine
While hearing the waves crash against the stone walls
Outside the thick walls, the people were exposed
To yellow fever and malaria, they died and died
—some survived
After thirty more years the people returned to their homeland
closer to the Skeleton Canyons where an epic scribed
on the mountain walls called back their ancestors
At night the drumming echoed like the murmur inside
Their bodies hearing the loud thumps come and go
In 1986 the people returned to their original place
—entering the ancient canyons
—honoring those killed
—remembering the mountains
At night the sparks fly high as the people hear those rusty bells
and hollow songs —they feel the drums and footsteps reverberate
Inside their veins every time, they look to the mountains
Scheme | XXAX XXX XBX ACD EXX XXXXE XXX XFX DCX FX XBXB XXB |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1000110101010 111101011 010100100011 100110101001 010101011011 0111011000101 101010010 110110100101 01010101010 0010110110110 0100010101011 101010110011 010010101010011 101101101010 10101011111110 100101100101 010101001011 00110011010111 0111011101010010 0101010101010111 11010 0111011110101 0101010101110 11001101011 11011010001 11010001001101 101 10101101001111 10101001011101 1010111110 1101010101001 11010011101 0010011101001 10001010 10011 0100010 110111101011101 01011101010100 01111001111010 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 2,192 |
Words | 334 |
Sentences | 3 |
Stanzas | 12 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 5, 3, 3, 3, 2, 4, 3 |
Lines Amount | 39 |
Letters per line (avg) | 41 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 134 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 27 |
About this poem
“This poem has been in constant revision for some time now. At the time I originally wrote this poem, I had just watched a short video about the Geronimo family returning to the original burial place of their ancestor Geronimo (Goyáła) in 1986. The video had me thinking about my writing, where I have never written about my culture. This was one of the first poems dedicated to my culture. The original poem (before the heavy revision) was read as part of MTV’s thirty-second short ‘Expand Your Mind’ video promo back on May 6, 1993. This version is clearer.” more »
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"Gahé Dzíł / Mountain Spirits" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 13 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/175906/gah%C3%A9-dz%C3%AD%C5%82----mountain-spirits>.
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