Rogers
' Rangers
Regarding
the fate of the forty-nine members of Rogers' Rangers who perished in the
wilderness of the White Mountains of New Hampshire after fleeing the
repercussions of their massacre of the Abenaki people of St. Francis, 1759.
in
the end, it had the taste
of
a divine curse, the
moon
projecting itself
into
our skulls, each twig-
snap,
each sliver of
dusk
the hot needle of
a
knife sliding into a
sleeping
ear like a
leech.
one of us ran
himself
off a cliff,
arms
flapping out of
their
sockets, becoming
two
white birds, another
devoured
by a she-bear
nothing
left but a sad
turd
of shredded green
wool,
gold fillings,
bone.
two of our Rangers
shot
each other― terror
a
domino moving ahead
of
their wits, loading
firing
reloading firing―
another
lipping his own
device,
toe on the trigger
how
the daylight snailed
over
his extinction with
a
lavender eraser. many
more
had become simply
not-there,
history rubbed
out,
flame running
backward
to singe their
fathers
groins.
earlier
in
the Abenaki village of
Major
Robert Rogers' lungs
move
like slow tigers, his
ribs
the stripes, cough of
his
harsh laugh flinting
bared
teeth off pillaged altar
pieces.
there were daggers
mumblepegged
into the
flanks
of the universe;
the
wind staggered sideways
like
an assassinated nun;
& the tundra rotated towards
the
St. Lawrence a half-mile
with
each extinguished
breath.
no prisoners our
Captain
chanted every five
minutes
& the first snowflakes
fell
alongside village-ash
among
dolls we told our ten-
fingered
hands all these
ridiculous
brown dolls
with their
humiliated skulls.
later, after the path home
disintegrated
& our stomachs
groaned
with the gravel of
swallowed
meteors, the
vines
snaked up
our
thighs into dreams to
caress
the faces in silver &
gold
pillage on our backs
&
it became quite clear: we
were
going to starve to death
lost,
bone cold, & nowhere.
some wrapped wet scalps
around
their hands, stuffed
them
in rotting boots & we
walked
on the dead for days
levitating
above our bodies
&
nights eating lilybulbs
thanking
morning
that at last came
warm,
the sun a piece of hot
gold coining itself over the
dark
Notch.
but
waiting for us there: an
ancient
eyeless indian, his
face
a hacked stump, of no
recognizable
tribe, brow
gouging
light, eye-sockets like
toad
mouths, grinning &
how no longer grinning Lt. Avery―
the
man never could ask for
directions
without balancing a
blade
on an Adam's apple―
spun
away and away and
away,
a purple cruciform,
a malfunctioning windmill
turning in a collapsing
circus,
the old indian's flung
rattlesnake
pumping the whole
damn
Notch into Avery's neck.
I
tell you, a man’s evil has a way of
following
him, of decapitating
his
shadow and sewing a
jack-o-lantern
in place of its head
&
we scattered. the last thing
I
remember was the Face in the
Granite,
its nose accusatory, a
frozen
lightningstrike, its brow
too
heavy, a primordial Jesus.
God,
if you can hear me from
this
puddle of fangs and fate I
have
evolved into, please tell
General
Jeffrey Amherst it is
waiting
for him, here―
has always been waiting―
hammering
our yellowed
eyeteeth into the heartwood
of
the trees.