After Marcus Licinius Crassus
defeated the army of Spartacus,
he crucified 6,000 men.
That is what the records say,
as if he drove in the 18,000
nails himself. I wonder how
he felt, that day. I wonder if he went
among them, if he walked that human
woods. I think he stayed inside,
and drank, and maybe copulated,
and heard the singing being done for him,
the woodwind-tuning he was doing at one
remove, to the six-thousandth power.