POEM
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Captivity

By Louise Erdrich b. 1954 Louise Erdrich

He (my captor) gave me a bisquit, which I put in my pocket, and not daring to eat it, buried it under a log, fearing he had put something in it to make me love him.

—From the narrative of the captivity of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, who was taken prisoner by the Wampanoag when Lancaster, Massachusetts, was destroyed, in the year 1676

The stream was swift, and so cold

I thought I would be sliced in two.

But he dragged me from the flood

by the ends of my hair.

I had grown to recognize his face.

I could distinguish it from the others.

There were times I feared I understood

his language, which was not human,

and I knelt to pray for strength.

We were pursued by God’s agents

or pitch devils, I did not know.

Only that we must march.

Their guns were loaded with swan shot.

I could not suckle and my child’s wail

put them in danger.

He had a woman

with teeth black and glittering.

She fed the child milk of acorns.

The forest closed, the light deepened.

I told myself that I would starve

before I took food from his hands

but I did not starve.

One night

he killed a deer with a young one in her

and gave me to eat of the fawn.

It was so tender,

the bones like the stems of flowers,

that I followed where he took me.

The night was thick. He cut the cord

that bound me to the tree.

After that the birds mocked.

Shadows gaped and roared

and the trees flung down

their sharpened lashes.

He did not notice God’s wrath.

God blasted fire from half-buried stumps.

I hid my face in my dress, fearing He would burn us all

but this, too, passed.

Rescued, I see no truth in things.

My husband drives a thick wedge

through the earth, still it shuts

to him year after year.

My child is fed of the first wheat.

I lay myself to sleep

on a Holland-laced pillowbeer.

I lay to sleep.

And in the dark I see myself

as I was outside their circle.

They knelt on deerskins, some with sticks,

and he led his company in the noise

until I could no longer bear

the thought of how I was.

I stripped a branch

and struck the earth,

in time, begging it to open

to admit me

as he was

and feed me honey from the rock.

Source: Original Fire: Selected and New Poems (HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 2003)

Biography

Louise Erdrich was born in Little Falls, Minnesota in 1954. As the daughter of a Chippewa Indian mother and a German-American father, Erdrich explores Native-American themes in her works, with major characters representing both sides of her heritage. In an award-winning series of related novels and short stories, Erdrich has visited and re-visited the North Dakota lands where her ancestors met and mingled, representing Chippewa . . .

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