Native American | PoetryNook

Native American Poems and Translations

These are my modern English translations of Native American poems, prayers, proverbs and blessings.

Sioux Vision Quest
by Crazy Horse, Oglala Lakota Sioux (circa 1840-1877)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A man must pursue his Vision
as the eagle explores
the sky's deepest blues.

***

Native American Travelers' Blessing
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Native American Translations

I translated these poems when my father, Paul Ray Burch Jr., chose to end his life by declining to submit to dialysis treatments and enter hospice.

Cherokee Travelers' Blessing I
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A rush of birch leaves carried to their place of autumnal permanence, she sits among burnished boulders, her long crow-black hair gently lifted in the wind's free will, as she can sense, always - her people speak in the wind, from where there were unspoiled forests, plains, and mountains with their footprints, where the nights' skies were bursting with stars, they had a oneness of their tribal hearts, their peace with the eagles, bears, wolves, buffalo, their braves' horses painted, then came an unnatural thunderous fire that scorched their lands, they were cruelly driven out - but their cultu

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