MARS GETS CLOSER and catches us looking at him and dancing gravely behind our telescopes we know him as the vigilant one so we show it by staying up at night waiting for the weather to break and watching him he wonders at us packed like wolves and snapping at each other not my fault he thinks calamities desolation sacrifice I'm not the one who claimed a surrender as a victory the name they gave me mystifies me as much as them bugs canals a face weather what will they think of me next? all I ever wanted was to farm no spears just stalks of grain no shields just fields to hold off the only real enemy: dearth hey they look like bugs don't they? crawling around down there some of them fat as grubs if I was a woodpecker I'd start striking