You are the dark shape I find On nights of the spilling moon, Pale in the pool of heaven. — N. Scott Momaday, from “Revenant” <i>The Death of Sitting… - N. Scott Momaday

And the simple act of listening is crucial to the concept of language, more crucial even than reading and writing, and language in turn is crucial to human society.

In the white man's world, language, too — and the way which the white man thinks of it — has undergone a process of change. The white man takes such things as words and literatures for granted, as indeed he must, for nothing in his world is so commonplace. On every side of him there are words by the millions, an unending succession of pamphlets and papers, letters and books, bills and bulletins, commentaries and conversations. He has diluted and multiplied the Word, and words have begun to close in on him. He is sated and insensitive; his regard for language — for the Word itself — as an instrument of creation has diminished nearly to the point of no return. It may be that he will perish by the Word.

A single knole rises out of the plain in Oklahoma, north and west of the Witchita Range. For my people, the s, it is an old landmark, and they gave it the name . ...To look upon that landscape in the early morning, with the sun at your back, is to lose the sense of proportion. Your imagination comes to life, and this, you think, is where Creation was begun.