I see a self who kills, perhaps even his best friend
over a game of cards, because he cheated and your
hand is quicker. And maybe there is even a self—
the unmentionable one—who bruises one woman’s arm,
slides between her legs because she speaks a different
language, because the men of her tribe killed your daughter,
because her god and your god are numb and deaf as a church before sunrise.
I don’t want to think about the possibility of evil,
the opportunity to drink the blackened song of death,
to die in one’s sleep, a hundred years old, a shriveled
statue to life, away from the heat of time; somewhere
perfect, California, somewhere at the edge of another sea.
The earth opened its mouth like a snake.
The war makes a man. We sing and drink, our host
shows us his house; the fisherman’s net spread
against the wall, starfish and seahorses caught
in its folds, dry and still; on the other wall,
I notice a wooden cross the size of a door.
In the photos he shares with us
he embraces a general and a priest, “This was a war
where simple men became generals.” The earth
had spoken. He answered its call. He had died
in winter, and then returned in two weeks,
miraculous as Jesus with a metal plate in his head.
Who understands the language of the earth? Even the swallow
who weaved his nest in the hole ripped by the tank,
flies in circles around our table and the dusk falls
happily, as a blindfold.
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