He doesn’t arrive en masse.
Doesn’t gather gregariously.
Doesn’t convene communally.
Doesn’t celebrate congenially.
Doesn’t wrest from himself
a choral voice.
Doesn’t declare to all concerned.
Doesn’t affirm in the name.
Investigations aren’t conducted
in his presence—
who’s for, and who’s against,
thank you, none opposed.
His head is missing
where head meets head,
step in step, shoulder to shoulder
and ever onward nonstop
with a pocketful of leaflets
and a product made of hops.
Where it’s sweetness and light
only to start,
since one crowd quickly
mixes with the next,
and who is to say
on the following day,
whose flowers, whose bricks,
whose huzzahs, whose sticks.
Unremarked.
Unspectacular.
He’s employed by City Sanitation.
At first light
from the site of the event
he sweeps up, carries off, tosses in the truck,
what’s been hammered onto half-dead trees,
trampled into the exhausted grass.
Tattered banners,
broken bottles,
burned effigies,
gnawed bones,
rosaries, whistles, and condoms.
Once he found a dove cage in the bushes.
He took it home
so he could
keep it empty.