You sharpen the tip of spear

with your teeth,

while your wife plows the ground

with jawbone of an ox.

She is a great, black fire.

The old blood is drifting up your throat

and the witch-men sing all night

of melon-breasted women in rival villages,

but the spear is wilting in your hands.

When you are standing in the river,

you grab a fish,

tear its flesh open with your teeth, and hold it,

until the bones in your fingers break up and fly about you like moths.

The river, a fish, your fingers, moths,

the war song churning in your belly.

-From Cruelty by the poet Ai.