again from Rothenberg's Shaking the Pumpkin, an entire (arranged and reworked by James Koller after John Swanton) sequence of sorts from the Tlingit--

here's found the same "Mourning Song" by Hayi-a k!^u though different, more detailed and retitled:

Funeral Song

You're like a drifting log with iron nails in it
I built my house from that log
I hope you float in like that log did
on a good sandy beach
The sun goes into the clouds
like you go into our great mother
That's why the world is so dark

This book seems to have been owned by 2 others prior to falling into my hands for $2. It's a Doubleday book published in 1972. The notes for this particular piece differ only in the omission of details. On the other hand, Rothenberg offers an interesting overview:

Koller's workings probably deliver much more than Swanton--describing the poems as "highly metaphorical" & hard to understand--thought possible to get across. But good poets have the advantage of not believing in metaphor, therefore not being conned by its presumed presence. What emerges, anyway, is a cumulative picture of Tlingit life & attitudes (given above without a break for singers' names, etc.) that the present editor finds almost unbearable in its clarity and directness.

If it's not otherwise apparent to the reader, note should also be made that many of the animal references (Wolf, Eagle, Crow, etc.) are to clans in the original, though Koller has chosen to emphasize their natural and totemic significances. "Crow" in Tlingit is more like "raven."

a couple of examples of this as in:

I wonder what eagle did to him
all those crows around him
it only took one crow to make the world

********************************

You surprise me, crow
whenever you see wolf people
you get way up on some branch

"I wonder what eagle" originally composed by Gaxe (Crying Wolf)
"You surprise me" originally composed by Nigot
according to the notes

I just realized how well with these Jordan's "Million Poems" juxtapose, for instance

#682

Staying close to the chair
While they're shooting around me
Finds something worth government
In the loose bits of rubber,
What a monitor creates by its remote
Preference. The defaults are set,
Glued in place even.

posted by Jordan at 12:56 PM

As for the rest of the Tlingit songs, they usually are connected to some event or conflict, as Johanna remarked.

But I need to go...