TO THE DESCENDANTS
OF THE GREAT EUROPEAN TRIBES
by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
(with permission)

If you would look into the last room
of the starry night,
there are powers there with names:
Tannenbow, Valdar, Yaga, and others.
They are your ancestors,
they sneeze with all the waiting for you.

They want to give you sword-making,
show you hidden ore amongst earth’s gasses.
They, like you, are a dust of glitter and light.
The names, the names. . .
call them by name,
for they have gone shadowy
from lack of your remembering,
from lack of your love.

Your Deep Earth Drum still lives,
though more more faint now.
Down there they have a theater waiting,
one that is lit by storms;
it takes only a name to start it.

Some firesides, the good princes show up;
the blind one who steals earrings
during the night shows up;
the wise one who sings souls into Nod;
the long-chin who concocts sweets,
and herbs for healing,
who lays huts of boughs for grieving,
and extracts her cost.

The one who bleeds gold,
breathes there.
The one who releases the bright,
burning fire arrow, lives there.
They are all there.
Your ancestors live!

Quick! the names,
the names. . .
call them by name. . .
before they lose all water
and die.

~*~

The charge of the storyteller is more than one of weaving,
reciting, entertaining.  It is a remembering of the start and a perception
of no ending.  It is the past brought forward into the now,
where it is made sense by those who have waited to be a part.

There is truth deeper than your bones, where the story
lives.  There, the proof of other dreams is feeding your own.

~*~