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From “Songs of the Coast-dwellers”
I AM Mo-an-mat-ma, the Dandy. | |
| My tribesmen, jealous, call me Many-Faces; | |
| But the name over my house-door | |
| Is Conqueror of Women. | |
| The Moon-Woman’s finger wrote it there. | 5 |
| I am as that red deer of stars | |
| In the night’s skyey forest, | |
| Ever pursued by the tossing foam of maidens’ love— | |
| Froth from the mouths of hunting wolves! | |
| (Ak! and some that be not maidens— | 10 |
| My blind-eyed kinsmen, look to the little straying feet | |
| Of such—and this—and that—um’m’m’m— | |
| Look to it!) They follow me, | |
| As the twinkling foam-track of hungry stars | |
| Endlessly trails after him, the antlered one, the Red Star— | 15 |
| But takes him never! Aik-Ki-yi-y! | |
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| I am the Conqueror of Women! | |
| My grass cap is set round with red breasts of red-breasted woodpeckers; | |
| My hair is sleek, black, long, bead-twined, | |
| It flashes like the watered fins of Auch-Willo | 20 |
| Striking through the sea in the sun. | |
| It is priceless as the fur of seals: | |
| It is heaven-blossomed, like Yethel’s wing. | |
| I am tall, tall, tall and proud, | |
| Proud, proud, proud, and strong; | 25 |
| Strong, strong, strong, like— | |
| Like all the men of the Haidas; | |
| Like all save me, who am tallest, proudest, strongest. | |
| My moccasins are of white doe-skin much embroidered; | |
| Five little rows of smallest white owl-feathers | 30 |
| Go round and round | |
| The star-signs, the love-signs, worked in colored grasses. | |
| (O my kinsman, O No-al-es, would you wed with Ho’g tonight | |
| If you knew—oh, la la!—who worked my moccasins?) | |
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| I am the Conqueror of Women! | 35 |
| My body is swiftly strong as the storm in spring, | |
| And beautifully large as the pale gold sand beneath the moon. | |
| I am long-limbed and thewed like the cliff, | |
| And curved in mighty curves like the shore about the sea. | |
| My voice in love-making is as birds warring. | 40 |
| It is as sea-gulls shrieking, in the ears of women; | |
| In anger—ai-k! how terrible in anger is my voice! | |
| It splits the hearts of women, like Yethel pecking clam-shells. | |
| Ai! They follow, follow my bright moccasins | |
| Through the crooked trails of the woods. | 45 |
| They break my hunting scent; they scare my fishes— | |
| Ak! ak! ak! love-seekers! husband-snatchers! | |
| Foolish, foolish and unwise, you dance after a ghost! | |
| I am Many-Faces, the Dandy; I wed none. | |
| I wed none, I miss none. I lose none. | 50 |
| I am the Conqueror of Women! | |
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