Widow's Saga

from Saskadumy | ЦАЦКАДУМА by Kitz Willman

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lyrics

A green pine was rustling, but it wasn’t a green pine
it was a poor poor widow lecturing her nine kids,
“We are an invading people on these Cree and Dene lands.
These maps show nothing new. We’re opîtatowew.
For us to swallow a stone and make supper of air on these plains,
well it is much more difficult to bear and to raise you kids.”

And that poor widow earned her bread in bitterness and through tears.
But she did raise kids.
Nine kids
in a strange and foreign land
And she did not let them go and work as hired hands in the tar sands.

Strange and foreign land

That widow watched her children leave in the night.
She kept her lips tight around the NWMP.
She did not support the infantry,
“No!”
Hid her trademarks in the sand,
kept tight-lip around the Man who asked questions in the bait of a Slavic tongue, said “all traitors get hung.”
She shrugged, pointed to the door and the visit was done.

But one day the farmhouse set aflame when the oil rig apparently jumped the tracks.
Life flashed before the widow’s eyes,
her children of nine who had left in the summer time…
She had a handle of sherry,
canned carrots and some Saskatoon berries.
The cold never tarry!
Frost bitten on both hands
in a strange and foreign land.