Page 37 of Collected Poems

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from the king's book of numbers

For in your house of stone

by the great road

you listened once to refugee voices

at dawn telling of massacres and plagues

in their land across seven rivers

Like a hornbill in flight

you tucked in your slippered feet

from the threshold

out of their beseeching gaze

But pestilence farther

than faraway tales of dawn

had bought a seat in Ogun's reckless

chariot and knocks by nightfall

on your iron gate.

Take heart oh chief; decimation

by miscount, however grievous,

is a happy retreat from bolder

uses of the past. Take heart,

for these scribal flourishes

behind smudged entries, these

trophied returns of clerical headhunters

can never match the quiet flow

of red blood.

But if my grudging comfort fail,

then take this long and even view to A.D. 2010

when the word is due to go out again

and—depending on which Caesar

orders the count—new conurbations

may sprout in today's wastelands,

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