The Stiltwalkers
by John Wall Barger
We arrived on horseback. Villagers pooled
around us, faces kind & open. We drugged the water.
We constructed their poverty from scratch.
Poured wine on each other’s heads, laughing,
dubbing ourselves kings. Introduced a new law:
each foot of each villager would be severed
& upon each stump a tall wooden stilt be sewn,
so they could not escape the woods. They turned
on us. My comrades fled. I heard the stilts on
cobblestones at midnight like a thunder.
I escaped my palace to the brink of a deep barranca
singing my death chant & hurled myself in.
I survived. Now I walk among them, disguised
as an old woman, feet strapped to stilts,
ankles blistered, toes smashed. They eye me
at market, but I do not break. I hobble to my room
under the stairs. Peel off the mask & wool dress.
O, freedom becomes them. They have grown eloquent
in walking. Running faster than we ever could.
Tall as birches. Their young born that way:
attached. I hear their voices, drowning phonemes,
through the floors. I do not make a sound.
I am afraid to look, but each night I peek out
at their street dances. They lope like puppets &
never fall. Women gyrate in a ring around the bonfire.
Behind, the men jump, ever higher, calling for love.
Women catch them. Everyone begins to spin,
these giants, arms upraised, slowly, then blurring—
impossibly—& sing in a collective low
moan the joy of their dark hearts like gods.
John Wall Barger has lived in Halifax, Vancouver, Ottawa, Rome, Prague, Dublin, and Tampere. His first book of poems, Pain-proof Men, came out in 2009 with Palimpsest Press. His next book, Hummingbird, is forthcoming with Palimpsest in spring 2012.