By Carter Revard
The creatures that we met this morning
marveled at our green skins
and scarlet eyes.
They lack antennae
and can’t be made to grasp
your proclamation that they are
our lawful food and prey and slaves,
nor can they seem to learn
their body-space is needed to materialize
our oxygen absorbers —
which they conceive are breathing
and thinking creatures whom they implore
at first as angels or (later) as devils
when they are being snuffed out
by an absorber swelling
into their space.
Their history bled from one this morning
while we were tasting his brain
in holographic rainbows
which we assembled into quite an interesting
set of legends —
that’s all it came to, though
the colors were quite lovely before we
poured them into our time;
the blue shift bleached away
meaningless circumstance and they would not fit
any of our truth-matrices —
there was, however,
a curious visual echo in their history
of our own coming to their earth;
a certain General Sherman
had said concerning a group of them
exactly what we were saying to you
about these creatures:
it is our destiny to asterize this planet,
and they will not be asterized,
so they must be wiped out.
We need their space and oxygen
which they do not know how to use,
yet they will not give up their gas unforced,
and we feel sure,
whatever our “agreements” made this morning,
we’ll have to kill them all:
the more we cook this orbit,
the fewer next time around.
We’ve finished burning all their crops
and killed their cattle.
They’ll have to come into our pens
and then we’ll get to study
the way our heart attacks and cancers spread among them,
since they seem not immune to these.
If we didn’t have this mission it might be sad
to see such helpless creatures die,
but never fear,
the riches of this place are ours
and worth whatever pain others may have to feel.
We’ll soon have it cleared
as in fact it is already, at the poles.
Then we will be safe, and rich, and happy here forever.
— Carter Revard (b. 1931)
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Carter Revard
Carter Revard, part Osage on his father’s side, was given his Osage name in 1952 in Pawhuska, the Agency town where he was born, by his grandmother, Mrs. Josephine Jump. He grew up in the Buck Creek Valley twenty miles east of Pawhuska, working in the hay and harvest fields, training greyhounds, and graduating as did his six brothers and sisters from Buck Creek School (one room, eight grades), where he and his twin sister did the janitoring in their eighth grade year. He graduated from Bartlesville College High, winning a radio quiz scholarship to the University of Tulsa, where he took a B.A. in 1952. He then took a B.A. from Oxford University with the help of a Rhodes Scholarship and support from Professor Franklin Eikenberry of the University of Tulsa, who also helped him go on to a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1959. Upon receiving his degree, Carter taught at Amherst College. Since 1961 he has taught at Washington University, St. Louis, and as a Visiting Professor at the University of Tulsa and University of Oklahoma. His scholarly work has been in medieval English literature [manuscripts, patrons, social contexts], linguistics, and American Indian literature. Two collections of his poems have been published by Point Riders Press in Oklahoma: Ponca War Dancers (1980) and Cowboys and Indians Christmas Shopping (1992). More recently, An Eagle Nation and Family Matters, Tribal Affairs have been published by the University of Arizona Press. Carter’s poems and stories have appeared in many journals and such anthologies as Talking Leaves (Dell, 1991) and New Worlds of Literature (Norton, 1989).Among the organizations to which Carter belongs are the Modern Language Association, the American Indian Center of St. Louis, where he was a board member in 1980-81 and 1984, secretary, 1986-90, and president, 1990–, the Association for Studies in American Indian Literature, the River Styx Literary Organization, the Association of American Rhodes Scholars, the University of Tulsa Board of Visitors, the St. Louis Gourd Dancers and Phi Beta Kappa.
In his 20-plus years with Harlem Children’s Zone, Inc., Geoffrey Canada has become nationally recognized for his pioneering work helping children and families in Harlem and as a passionate advocate for education reform.
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