M. A. Schaffner

Lepers

We came with gifts from the Naval Station.
The priests thanked us; the inmates also seemed
glad for the attention. I met a man
whose fingers had grown into his palms, which
left his paintbrush in a permanent jab.
Everyone smiled. The families were allowed

to live in the compound. A variety
of livid, metastatic flowers raged
in well-kept beds by their dormitories,
as they did on base. We brought the usual
goodwill offerings: used clothes that would
otherwise go to the maids; canned peas and beets;

a leather-bound transistor radio.
A woodcarver without feet and a face
queerly twisted appeared not to see us,
but worked at the grain in a chunk of teak
with a used scalpel and special fervor.
Seventy years earlier we fought them,

our rifles and machine guns competing
with spears, swords, and knives. We followed with 
    schools
and inoculations, engineering
and investments. I went through a period
of not caring, then of shame. Now it feels
almost as if we’d no more choice than they.

The priest served us tea and a few stale cakes
that we left for the next donors. Later,
hours down the debilitated trunk road,
schoolmates and our chaperones competed
in expressions of sympathetic awe,
knowing on some level – even there and then –

everything we could be accused of, yet
still amazed at the wood sculptor’s portrait
of a warrior, muscled and serene, carved
with a private passion that attempted
not representation but grace, as if
whatever god we had could do that, too.

______

M. A. Schaffner writes: “I work as a civil servant in Washington, spending lunchtimes feeding the lineal descendants of the squirrels fed by Ambrose Bierce a century ago.” He has published a collection of poetry, The Good Opinion of Squirrels (Word Works) and a novel, War Boys (Welcome Rain).