OLFACTORY
At daybreak, plantation workers
Come to the rubber trees,
There are rows upon rows of trees,
Battalions of trees,
Planted in straight lines,
Dressed and covered.
Some workers carry
5-gallon metal cans
Suspended from a yoke
Worn across the shoulders.
Other workers take small white bowls
From metal taps fitted at the base
Of the trees, and pour the gathered
Sap into the cans.
The pourers then take small sharp knives
And clean out the scars,
Cut through bark and into the flesh
Of the trees.
The scars extend from as far up
As a worker can reach,
Around the trunk
And down,
In a continuous spiral.
It is through those scars
The sap flows, reaches the metal taps,
Drips into the small white bowls.
At dusk, other workers
Come to the trees.
The new workers wear
Green cotton tunics and trousers
And carry rifles and machine guns.
The new workers lie in tall grass beneath
The trees. The new workers
Smell the sap that flows
Through old scars.
The sap has a pungent odor
And tickles nostril hairs,
Much the same as does the scent
Of humans
Freshly, violently, dead.
Sometimes at night, the first workers,
Wearing black shirts and black trousers,
Arms and hands heavy
With the rifles and machine guns
They carry,
Return to the trees,
Searching for the new workers.
If the old workers and the new workers
See each other,
Some will die.