Oklahoma

←Three Stories and Ten Poems

Oklahoma  (1923)  by Ernest Hemingway

First published in Three Stories and Ten Poems (Summer 1923)

All of the indians are dead
(A good indian is a dead Indian)
Or riding in motor cars,
(The oil lands, you know, they're all rich)
Smoke smarts my eyes,
Cottonwood twigs and buffalo dung
Smoke grey in the teepee-
(Or is it myopic trachoma?)

The prairies are long,
The moon rises,
Ponies
Drag at their pickets.
The grass has gone brown in the summer-
(Or is the hay crop failing?)

Pull an arrow out,
If you break it
The would closes.
Salt is good too
And wood ashes.
Pounding it throbs in the night-
(Or is it the gonorrhea?)

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was legally published within the United States (or the United Nations Headquarters in New York subject to Section 7 of the United States Headquarters Agreement) before 1964, and copyright was not renewed. For Class A renewals records (books only) published between 1923 and 1963, check the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database and the Rutgers copyright renewal records. For other renewal records of publications between 1922 - 1950 see the Pennsylvania copyright records scans. For all records since 1978, search the U.S. Copyright Office records. The author died in 1961, so this work is also in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 50 years or less. This work may also be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works. Works published in 1923 would have had to renew their copyright in either 1950 or 1951, i.e. at least 27 years after it was first published / registered but not later than 31 December(31 December) in the 28th year. As it was not renewed, it entered the public domain on 1 January 1952(1 January 1952).