In your presence, I should be silent
The truth is we've never actually met
In this life or even next.  No matter
The closest encounter came
when I drove past Seattle
a city named after another great Chief
Great but dead.  No matter

As I looked out of the car window
In the far distance there stood
a mountain, a majestic peak
downing the color of snow white
the color of mourning in silence
That was the moment when I recalled you
the unknown chief who I've never met
Except I had a stamp bearing your portrait
Never before that stamp had I seen
so much kindness in one face

At once did you remind me of my grandpa
a gentleman of millennia in the making
Thus you become my chief, my nameless chief
At once you bring back thousands of years
of hunting and hurting
of famine and festivity
of tribal war and co-existence
of avalanche and bonfire
of drought and flood
of death and birth
of adversity and humanity
of wisdom and tolerance
and of this green earth
Thousands of years have cut out
a magnanimity that is as wide as the ocean
and as far-gazing as the mountain
a trait that could never be matched
by any race for the rest of time

I could never fathom a sadness so spectacular
How could you have no idea, my beloved chief
how small other hearts really were
The harshness of life brought you wisdom
That has become part of your stupidity
and eventually your demise

I can't even speak too loudly in your presence
how could I scream across the corridor of time --
there are times a virtuous man can't afford virtue
When dealing with low lives a gentlemen's kindness
becomes his vulnerability and his peril
You were badly outnumbered by low lives, my Chief

Rumor says that you were ignorant, uneducated
You'd devoted too many years to feelings
Generations of you trickled into a weird meditation
and a strong conviction of harmlessness
You had converted hateful and unruly hearts into love
rough-edged love that would outlast time itself
But that love could never rescue you
from that final avalanche
Tolerance is not an original impulse
but a great tradition of awakening.
Silence has been perfected into an art form
You are the first ever to have reached humanity
in its original sense.  In silence
and now in blankness

Devotion can be joy and pain at the same time
It shows on your face, you have an expression
that forever reminds me of my grandpa
It's this resemblance that captures me
and makes you my Chief, my chief sadness

Life does not repeat itself so we can never
have the same splendor and misery again and again
Chief is a life time recognition
Because of you, my wound is forever wider than the sky
a sadness is so unbearably spectacular
How could anyone justify that thousands of years
of self-perfection, maturation and wisdom
only ended up as a stamp ... my Chief
How could a mountain ever disappear
from the face of this god-damn earth
How could wisdom of millennia be wasted
so completely on a stamp?  How ...

Looking at the postmarks so rude
My muscle spasm tells me
that you are dead
killed, murdered, extinct
In death you become my beloved Chief
Deader than death itself
Thus you make me tremble
You make me think of jungle
and its many animals of venom
uncivilized mannerism in the name
of civilization and the so-called education

October, 2000