From all accounts, it was riotous—
the movement swelled like a blister
in the streets. They say I started it,
and perhaps I did, striking
conversation with god like a torch
in a wet sackcloth. We had little left
but superstition: at night
I beheld visions of Victus
creasing the skin of a great drum.
And though all summer it rained,
hundreds spun within their sleeves,
each of us reeling a cocoon
around what could be scavenged
from our minds made blank by hunger,
the flooded crops, the chickens’ lice—
the dry slugs we picked from damp rye
and fed to the bulls which staggered, panting,
into the dirt.
Some claim I died but continued to dance.
Why else would so many come see?
We transferred disease in breath
and beat. Hot blood, hummed the priests,
as to what caused the fever. What was it they saw?
Juddering arms raised as if to catch. Thinned
by smaller breaths in ecstasy, our bodies
grew heavy and light. Heels bled and dragged.
They built us a hall to die in.
A band even played for a time.
Swaying on swollen ankles, a woman called
for three late children: why why why
Hot blood? Is that true?
Certainly, we would have frozen to death
if our heads had not caught on fire.
