Ode to Scythes

The scythes are emissaries from a country that no longer exists. They have only each other to converse with now that their translator the whetstone went off & joined the knives. They huddle together in corners, nested esses long in the tooth but still as fluid as the staff of Moses at the exact moment it shifted into an asp. Do you remember, they murmur, how the crowds would lose their heads & stand like soldiers, stiff, when the wind moved through?