Poem
A spook regretted
that NCOs and privates took the heat
for Abu Ghraib. He had worked with them and liked them -
easy to talk to once you gain their trust;
so grateful for the least sign of respect.
"Recycled rednecks," sure,
but in the eyes of history aren't we all?
He too liked sports, hunting,
large awkward families, church;
contrary to Marxism
(he was old enough to have learned all that)
such things are the roots of society, not its stench.
He felt committed enough to re-up
(himself unphotographed, unimplicated)
and was rewarded with real subjects -
people who had actually done something -
and his own translator, an older local
who sweated through long sessions in a ski-mask.
"You can take that off," said the spook
one afternoon. The translator
did so, avoiding the eye
of the prisoner across the table.
They had reached the stage of cigarettes and water.
The prisoner clutched a cup in his good hand
but ignored the smokes. The spook lit up
(he never did, at home),
admiring, not for the first time, the native hair;
I'd kill for the hair, he thought.
This one had given all he had to give -
what he would give - and the spook had time
to waste. "You guys are perfect," he said.
"No one will ever believe what you believe.
However annoyed people get -
I mean real people, us -
at all the problems in their lives,
you'll always be worse, and you'll always be around.
Therefore I'll always have a job
and so will everyone, however many
buildings of ours you knock down, or even nuclear plants.
Our job will be to fuck you up." And, seeing
the translator struggle - with the concepts,
and with the continual praying and cursing of
the prisoner - he said, "Don't bother."
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