Again the newly beheaded men have risen, their blood no longer a stain but a sheen. They 
have risen, clothes still unclean, crusted with desert, standing two by two, silent in that line, 
partnered, hand in hand. Tender, reticent, full-shouldered, hooded with sky, their legions stretch 
as far as we can see—all the way up their road to the end of this treeless valley, and past the end, 
to the ridge, to the sharp-rocked ridge.
        Again they have risen to line up blade-straight, wait. The bonds they formed in burial, 
beyond us. Arms at their sides, it is their hands we notice: each free hand flexing, relaxing, 
flexing, each held hand finger-twined, swinging a little, childlike, almost, in anticipation. 
        Their heads are nowhere near. They are in trenches & head-pits & town wells, muslin-
wrapped in the trunks of cars, they are staked or buried singly or stacked in caves, where they 
speak their breathless language, crazed, jiggering ways to get back: the mason, who feels he’ll 
use mortar & bits of bone & brick, the plumber, who ponders a clean band of lead, the doctor 
simple sutures, the bureaucrat a pound of paper clips, the journalist a scarf of newsprint—his 
facts will not fail him, he’ll be healed in antiseptic ink.
        Again the newly beheaded men have risen, but this will not go on for long, for the weak 
signals will fade, disconnect, each lost mouth clotted with grit, the mind soon to forget what it’s 
after: body, lover, daughter, son—and the torso, deeper in the dust it comes from, only wants 
rain.
        Let us watch them, then, while it lasts: this line. See how it stretches all the way to the  
horizon. Let us take it in, from our side, in our time—we who have nothing to offer.