The last sergeant

I woke up with this poem this morning...

The last sergeant wrote in code
dreamed in code
in furtive Post-it codes
that whipped out to sea
or melted on the floors
of jungle ruins.

Plans and diaries and love notes to
the lost emperor, or his heir,
who could not find a place to land
and so floated,
somewhere,
beatific.

The occupiers glimpsed him
in their shadows and imagined
his tattered sergeant's uniform.
decorations in code,
memories in
ribbon.

The legend grew fierce but
he was croaking mad when they found him
so they didn't recognize
his radio to the stars
moldering in the cave-trash leftovers
of a twenty-year mission
to nowhere.

Comments

[Agricola]

You must have been dreaming about the Japanese soldiers left behind in the Phillipines who refused to believe the war was over.....or you are reading Cryptomonicon....

[Daniel]

Those soldiers are much on my mind.