SALAMANCA A PROPHECY
(1)
a city on
a turtle’s back
a longhouse
/
was like Jerusalem
‘s temple resting
on a whale
(2)
impossible to bring it all
together
Seneca Nation
Salamanca, New York
Jerome Rothenberg
Posted over on his site, Poems and Poetics
Rothenberg wrote further: "The connection between the Beaver as totem (clan) animal & the short phrases derived from the Hebrew bible is now hard for me to reconstruct, but my time during our reservation stay coincided not only with the writing of Shaking the Pumpkin and A Seneca Journal, but with the beginnings of Poland/1931 and A Big Jewish Book. The dedicatory poem in A Seneca Journal is also a reflection of that.
Salamanca is a railroad town right on the reservation. I saw it once on a German map of America that omitted Albany. The population now is 7000 & is mostly white. Charles Olson wrote: History is the new localism. And Ezra Pound: An epic is a poem including history. When I die my name goes back to where it came from. A Seneca will come for it.
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