In a far country is my heart
And though it calls, I cannot go
Swift as the Nightwing flies,
Which the white man calls the crow,
To the Indian Nations
Where in the lodges of the reservation
Tales are told of long ago,
In the warrior tongue still spoken,
Though many words I do not know
That my grandfather remembers
Before the endless lands were taken
And the treaties all were broken
And the Elder tribes forsaken
Westward Ho! With blood and slaughter
Came the white man like the water
Like the wave that took Atlantis
Took the sons and the daughters
Cortez came with smallpox in 1522
Washington slew the Iroquois
And Custer scalped the Sioux
Now the Red Gulags that are the reservations
Form an Archipelago
Indian islands in the American sea
From Canada to Mexico
And the shaman’s dreams
Have been all of woe
Since the surrender of Geronimo
– Irving Karchmar, © 1991
Ya Haqq!
In a Far Country is My Heart
October 15, 2006In a far country is my heart
And though it calls, I cannot go
Swift as the Nightwing flies,
Which the white man calls the crow,
To the Indian Nations
Where in the lodges of the reservation
Tales are told of long ago,
In the warrior tongue still spoken,
Though many words I do not know
That my grandfather remembers
Before the endless lands were taken
And the treaties all were broken
And the Elder tribes forsaken
Westward Ho! With blood and slaughter
Came the white man like the water
Like the wave that took Atlantis
Took the sons and the daughters
Cortez came with smallpox in 1522
Washington slew the Iroquois
And Custer scalped the Sioux
Now the Red Gulags that are the reservations
Form an Archipelago
Indian islands in the American sea
From Canada to Mexico
And the shaman’s dreams
Have been all of woe
Since the surrender of Geronimo
– Irving Karchmar, © 1991
Ya Haqq!