The Painting Poet
I plucked a feather with a cactus drill
From the gray wing of a thrush;
One side I sharpened to a poet’s quill,
The other end, a painter’s brush.
I paint the sage upon the shady ground
With pigment-words of silver-jades,
And then I turn my wonder-pen around
And with it add the purple shades.
–Fray Angelico Chavez
Cantares: Canticles and Poems of Youth, 1925-1932
“My parents were the grandchildren of the founders of Wagon Mound, New Mexico. My Chavez grandfather was brought as a child from Belen. My mother’s side were Roybals from the Jacona district. Again, her father was brought as a child to Wagon Mound. I was born in 1910, exactly nine months after they were married–to the day. There were ten children in all.”
“From Mora to the Mission : Fray Angelico Chavez”, Turn Left at the Sleeping Dog: Scripting the Santa Fe Legend, 1920-1955 / by John Pen La Farge.