White Man Says to Me, Save
White man says to me,
save.
I save, String, Bricks, Trees.
Horses, Leather. Nobody wants
what I save. So I go into the
desert, rolling my ball of string
which is four feet in diameter.
Two white men come. They look at
the bricks. Trees. Horses.
Leather. String, Where’d you
steal them things they ask.
they don’t listen. they take
the string from me and they
twist it into a rope. Now they
put the rope around my neck.
They hang me from one of the
trees I saved.
by Fred Red Cloud
From American Indian Prose and Poetry
—After the White Man Came
Capricorn Books, 1974