Page:Anthology of Magazine Verse (1921).djvu/162

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Have vanished with your basswood water-drum,Do you recall our cruise to Flute-reed Falls?Our first together—oh, many moons ago—Before the curés built the village mission?How, banked against our camp-fire in the bushOf sugar-maples, we smoked kin-ník-kin-ník,And startled the sombre buttes with round raw songs,With wails that mocked the lynx who cried all nightAs if her splitting limbs were torn with painOf a terrible new litter? How we talkedTill dawn of the Indian's Kéetch-ie Má-ni-dó,The Mighty Spirit, and of the white man's God?Don't you remember dusk at Cold-spring Hollow?—The beaver-pond at our feet, its ebony poolWrinkled with silver, placid, calm as death,Save for the fitful chug of the frog that floppedHis yellow jowls upon the lily-pad,And the quick wet slap of the tails of beaver hurryingHomeward across the furrowing waters, ladenWith cuttings of tender poplar . . . down in the swaleThe hermit-thrush who spilled his rivuletOf golden tones into the purple seasOf gloam among the swamps . . . and in the East,Serene against the sky—do you remember?—Slumbering Mont du Père, shouldering its cragsThrough the crumpled clouds, rose-flushed with after-low . . .And dew-lidded dusk that slipped among the valleysSoft as a blue wolf walking in thick wet moss.How we changed our ribald song for simple talk! . . .
"My frie', Ah-déek, you ask-um plenty hard question:Ugh! W'ere Kéetch-ie Má-ni-dó he live?Were all dose Eenzhun spirits walk and talk?Me—I dunno! . . . Mebbe . . . mebbe over here,In beaver-pond, in t'rush, in gromping bullfrog;Mebbe over dere, he's sleeping in dose mountain . . .

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