We set off and return in greyness, pass
the growing animal entourage that
sleeps curled against the perimeter wire,
close as it can manage to our fires.
The severed heads poled along the highway:
a leering puppetry,
fitted to the dim-dawned place we’ve made.
Only the very old and very young
in the villages we raze.
Our generals sleep soundly, without exception,
wake slowly
to their coffee in the morning.
Nights I have stood outside my tent, seen
the orange glow far across the dark space
ringing the plateau, yet felt the heat on my skin,
felt that I could fan the flames from
where I stood, if I wanted.
All around me, not only in the directions where I knew,
the villages lay, this glow
like a candle’s light on the inside of a tent.
I concluded nothing then.
To think too far along such lines,
while others sleep, is to risk everything.
We torched the maps
when we torched the crops.
We torched the crops
when we knew those back home
wouldn’t take us in again.
The maps meant nothing anyway.
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