It will be a Saturday when all the soldiers
drop their guns and knives and wave
the battlefields away, leaving them
to the croaks of birds and creaky leather
and the somewhat confused spirits of the dead
who hear the moon scream at their backs
and the anger of those with nothing better
to do than skin with their thumbnails
the images of men and women in magazines
and dusty books where bad ideas
accumulate like spores on old wallpaper.
The soldiers walk away with all the war
poems ever written and to be written
etched on little stones in their stomachs.
Sunday the leaders land in their ships
to bring reason and their religions here
and to bawl out the generals for making
this chaos of cattle prints in the sand.
Soon the air moves and the sand scratches
their glasses and grits the corners of their eyes.
They drink cool water and check their schedules
and ask the whereabouts of their children.
Monday will hear uncertain sounds in the spaces
between the sprinkle drops as the leaders wonder
at the strange shadows they make in the drying dust
when the clouds break and they thumb through their scripts
in search of phrasings older maybe than Sanskrit
or puppetry or grave digging. That one in a black suit
carves an arc with the tip of a shoe.
Another wipes his pink neck and says he could
eat a hot dog or a puffin or an octopus.
On Tuesday one of them remembers the day of enticement.
He remembers falling on the ice.
He remembers how his mother smiled and danced
through a crack in the door late at night
when he should have been sleeping.
Another wants to run to a boat and fish.
A woman tosses a wand into the circle.
In comes a fish fin, a bottle cap, a tarnished spoon.
A man plucks out his eye and eats it like an egg.
A woman says that’s a pretty good trick.
Wednesday a man crosses the circle and slashes
at a woman’s jaw and the blood that comes
makes everyone crazy for finger painting
and they remember the beauty of open wounds
which is the same feeling in all the languages
of the world. After some time only five remain,
three men and two woman who watch each other
from the perimeter like alligators.
On Thursday a man chips blood from his tongue
and clears his throat and dons the robes of an orator.
He deplores the image of heathens, supporting his concoctions
with words that look like stinkhorn, and then jade stones
and pigeon livers scattered among the flakes
of the moon, and he reads their shapes
as proof of the truth of his positions.
A woman says that’s a pretty good trick.
On Friday they see mammoths crossing the white dunes.
Black birds appear on foot out of the shadows.
The rivers pour slowly into the sea.
One claims his mother’s face in a stone.
Another says he’ll drink his own tears.
Journalists are repeatedly typing one word.
On Saturday the soldiers return to find the five
with their jaws gnawing on ankles and wrists,
as if attempting escape or crude leeching.
Look at them, the soldiers say.
How have we got along without them?
How will we ever learn to paint wonders again?
