Ceremony Poem XXVII Summary

  • Hummingbird and Fly take the tobacco to old Buzzard, who agrees to purify the town.
  • Everything is set right again after the ck'o'yo magic.
  • The storm clouds return and the plants start to grow again. The people have food and aren't starving anymore.
  • The corn mother tells the people to stay out of trouble, because it isn't very easy to fix things once they've gone wrong. She tells them to remember that the next time some ck'o'yo magician comes to town.
  • Back to prose, now.
  • Tayo goes to see old man Ku'oosh and the other old men of Laguna. They meet in a kiva, an underground room used by modern Puebloans for religious rituals.
  • In the room are boxes and trunks covered by tarps to protect them from being seen by the uninitiated. Is this Tayo's initiation into the group?
  • Tayo tells the old men his story. It takes a really long time because the old men keep interrupting to ask about the location or time of day, the direction she had come from, and the color of her eyes.
  • Tayo is facing southeast. He realizes the four windows along the south will of the kiva have a particular relationship to the late autumn position of the sun.