When he came down from the mountains
and told everyone about the great things he had seen
they only replied "You haven't come down far enough."
They stripped from him
the clothes he made himself
from the carcasses of goats and meager leaves,
they snapped the walking sticks
he wittled from the trees that hugged the foothills,
they kicked him bleeding and naked
further down the valley. He bore it without complaint.
When he arrived at the next town,
he told them about the great things he had seen
through swollen eyes and cracked lips,
and they said "You're crazy, but we'll help you anyway."
They nursed him and clothed him, made him comfortable,
but they shook their heads when he told them of wonders
far from home; eventually, he fell silent and smiling
until, one day, someone looked up at the jagged teeth
scraping the sky all around him and wondered
what the village looked like from up there.
He took them aside and he told them
"You'll be damned if you go, and you'll be damned if you stay here.
Go."
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