So go the old stories,
like wind in the long grass,
loose wind singing in fences,
wind like the white wolf
moving in over the snow.
Nobody knows now
how many died; some say
two hundred or more
in Dakota Territory,
Nebraska, and Kansas.
Few records were kept;
the dead were buried at home,
in poorly marked graves
in the corners of fields.
All that was long ago,
but the wind in the hedgerow,
the wind lifting the dust
in the empty schools,
the wind which in the tin fan
of the windmill catches,
turning the wheel to the north—
that wind remembers their names.