I want to write an
honest sentence. The difference between an order and a should
construction is likely a matter of timing. In the Sessions of sweet
silent thought the attorney general will be canned, his deputy sent
out to pasture. A cow mooed this morning, a clock ticks; as I walked
up the hill, I heard an earthquake in the groaning of the nearest
house. My friend could call them to the decimal point before she
stopped noticing. The house is a boat, anchored on porous earth. Ohia
trees stand, not yet victims of the virus; coqui frogs chant a mile
away, but not here, and the air is only sometimes acid. A violet belt
of vog weaves through the Saddle, and where the horizon was is now a
pastel smudge. It's not what we can't see that disturbs us, but that
we see it laid out before us. He reached for the tortoise, but its
legs were boiling away. A little girl died in ICE custody. They're
summer camps, the president says, horrified his campaign director was
put in solitary. They were all screaming obscenities, but we see her
in a bubble, the blonde woman whose third finger thrusts forward at
the reporter, face tangled, body coiled. She and they are making
America great again. We could state the obvious in perpetuity, but
where would it get us? To the next station of what cross? I wondered what
the X meant in Charing X Road. The pope puts a cardinal in solitary
to work on penance, which sounds like what he showed his altar
boys. Sound unsenses us. Get as close as you can to the aching beams
and the crickets. Cut out the middlemen, the lobbyists of meaning,
the men in ostrich coats. Ostracize the priests, the grandfathers,
the kind man across the street, the military baby-sitter, the
perverted customs agent. I have put a good face on it, my friend
says, but I am so disillusioned, so tired. As the Buddhists say, we
are softened. Marvel at those who remain so solid on their solid
earth.
for Carla Billiteri
--1 August 2018
