We Were A Whole Army Underground

American Poetry Review, The, May/Jun 1998 by Wenderoth, Joe

We were a whole army underground;

we did not move.

We were replicas, at first,

but the army above,

the men we were shaped to resemble,

moved, spoke, faded, and came

to rot in shallow graves above us.

We were never them;

even as the workers painted our eyes

the colors of their eyes,

even as they hauled us by torch-light

into the vast royal burial chamber

and made us to stand the way they stood, once,

above, we were never them.

When our faces were finally finished

and our ranks were formed,

we stood guard over the absence

of the one who required us.

No one was allowed to look.

The chambers were sealed

and the last few torches burned down.

We stood suddenly alone in silent darkness.

We knew, though, that someone above

could imagine us, and we could sleep

standing up in that image.

The workers, who painted our eyes

and carved our horses' manes,

could imagine us-the priests,

who looked into our faces and blessed us

before and for this dark, could imagine,

and knew that we were there.

But then they moved, faded, and came to rot.

We were still spoken of, as time passed,

but only as an idea, as though

we did not actually stand here

inside the earth, in these colors,

these unseeing eyes, this dark.

No one any longer imagined us as real;

we had to imagine ourselves,

the way we looked, the way we stood,

from the inside,

from the stillness of our own hearts.

And we did learn to see ourselves in this way:

blind, colorful, standing guard over nothing.

And we came to accept, in the stillness of the years,

that we would not be found.

Our guard would not be relieved,

our faces would never be hauled up

into the sharp light that forged us.

You, then, came as a surprise.

Your small force overwhelmed us so easily

it seems impossible to imagine

that we were, all the while, that vulnerable.

And we could not even say from whence you came.

Had you come from afar, intent on plundering our stillness,

should we not have seen you coming?

It seems more likely you came from within,

from nothing,

escaping it perhaps,

but if so, what kept you back for so long?

We surely never intended to confine you.

If you have come, after all, to relieve us of our guard

and this is our hope, of course

we are grateful,

we forgive you for having taken so long,

and we surrender to you all we know,

which is just the patience to withstand

the nothing you came from.