I
The rustle at the start of the day
swells like trumpets at the charge of war.
I stand at the precipice, ten thousand like me
on my flank. Swords at the hilt. Metaled,
breast to bone.
I dare not look back, not into the soft
yesterday. But into the breach, flag waving,
tugging on the misfit passions within;
they, too, will unfurl, for they must
when the melee is joined
steps out from the sunrise.
II
I have never seen such brokenness
rolling, like tumbleweed, in the after-fog.
The still is deafening, as I stand outside
myself, looking on: ten thousand thousand
with no mercy felled, the stench in plumes ascending.
I have made it here, beyond the charge.
But I could not say who has won the day,
or what even was to be won. The sun, I know,
is tired of watching plaguing passions
clutch in fits of men. Is it not enough, she asks,
to accept the day?
