House Made of Dawn
N. Scott
Momaday
Dypaloh. There was a house made of dawn. It was made of
pollen and of rain, and the land was very old and everlasting. There were many
colors on the hills, and the plain was bright with different-colored clays and
sands. Red and blue and spotted horses grazed in the plain, and there was a
dark wilderness on the mountains beyond. The land was still and strong. It was
beautiful all around. […]
The Canyon is a ladder to the plain. […]
Man came down the ladder to the plain a long time ago.
It was a slow migration, though he came only from the caves in the canyons and
the tops of the mesas1 nearby.
There are low, broken walls on the tabletops and smoke-blackened caves in the
cliffs, where there are metates2 and
broken bowls and ancient ears of corn3, as if the prehistoric civilization had gone
out among the hills for a little while and would return; and then everything
would be restored to an older age, and time would have returned upon itself and
a bad dream of invasion and change would have been dissolved in an hour before
the dawn. For man, too, has a tenure in the land; he dwelt upon the land
twenty-five thousand years ago, and his gods before him.
1. altopiano
2. pietra usata per macinare il
grano 3. pannocchie di mais
