Innocence

 

for Michel Houellebecq

 

 

1

 

Nature can’t die – it only regears

for algae, roaches, 

and the Great Dry.

It won when it appeared,

and when there is nothing left

will still have won.

That girl on the crumbling steps 

of the School of Performing Arts 

in full sun … I looked,

driving past, for a cigarette

or likelier cellphone

that weren’t there.  So why

with that beauty 

(which, with any sense,

could be parlayed at least 

into comfort) – hair

defeating frizz, 

bare legs braced

against the stone as if against

waves at a shoreline – was she sitting 

in the heat, and with that expression (none)?

 

2

 

Too little data,

or perhaps too much,

to track down – a photo 

from one of those periodic 

liberal pilgrimages … A kid 

watching over a windowledge 

high in the Projects.  In a moment, his

mother will remind him

not to be seen

from the plaza or sidewalk

littered with condoms, shell-casings, needles,

and other boys.  Who want

in an impersonal way

to employ him, or would

if they were aware of him.  So she takes him

to school (where he strives

not to be seen), picks him up

after her first job, takes 

him home, goes to her second,

returns, feeds him, checks homework.  

She has already banished 

puberty from the apartment; she will plead, reason,

command adolescence away.

One day she will stand

at the foot of an institution

of higher learning; and

as he, in his white shirt, neat slacks and tie,

ascends, the demons, recognizing

defeat, will gnash their teeth and shoot each other,

while she, her mission done,

shrivels like a womb.  Or so, no doubt,

she intends.  At the window,

the back of his shaved head

looks bored.

*Always the sea calls*, wrote Benn from a cancer ward.

 

3

 

The private most recently raped

by the notorious sergeant has started 

eating again.  Her period came, she has

no symptoms of anything; it was

made clear to her

that a report would cause trouble; and

she needs the pay and an honorable 

discharge.  The food is plentiful and good.

A couple of guys feel bad, 

but only discuss

patrols and convoys

where no one was killed, and therefore something

went right, as a way of alluding

to others that went wrong. 

And laugh about the endless

stupidity, filth,

duplicity of the locals, the colorful

postures of various

inept (dead) enemies.  

Across town, someone cries God is great

and other impassioned uplifting remarks

through a loudspeaker.  A kid

who hopes in his way

to follow the example of McVeigh

bumps a black comrade

in line for seconds, politely excuses himself.

An effective, unobnoxious

Christian creates a zone

of politeness, lack of profanity,

devotion – at least to orders,

if not the cause –

around him at his table.  This niceness

seems to the others sort of kindergarten,

but nice.  “We’re all short-timers in this life.”

Later, the M-1s and Humvees

smoke up the morning, ordered

to an unpoliced area.  Women peer

through slits in robes and doors, 

men flee and fire, and the soldiers move

into the mind and landscape of the future.

 

4

 

In the smoking lounge, a bore, an engineer,

American of course, is holding forth

about the possibility of television.

(As the joke goes: One hears so much of that

on the wireless ... )  To avoid him,

Keith Douglas seeks the observation deck.

It is not yet noon,

and the shadow of the airship

follows it, over dunes and through depressions –

all different, he thinks, but in ways

important to scorpions and lizards,

not men … He is canny enough

to let the unformed thought

sink back to some Freudian cavern

without committing his notebook to it.

Then what must be a caravan

appears and slowly vanishes,

likewise unable to become

symbolic.  At the rail,

the Austrian, the seedy Polish prince,

and the Englishwoman traveling alone

gaze out, subdued by boredom or, perhaps,

the breadth of Empire.  The voice

of the German is heard

from the salon, protesting

some outrage in the colonies.

In his rough style (Douglas thinks)

he is playing for the English girl, 

but she shall fall before Peking

to his tablemate, the young Administrator;

or me.  Yet for the moment

two words with her, a slight

rearrangement of her hat,

suffice; he wants to talk with ancient Wilfred

Owen, fortuitously

aboard and only recently

emerged from his cabin.  And who

in the event seems more concerned

(in a watery way) with the recurring

anguish of Canada and the Balkans

than with his latest, vast Collected Works,

or Douglas’s disjointed praise or few

slim volumes.  Chalk one up

to disillusionment, the irony

that alone apparently inspires

our times, Douglas reflects.

After ten minutes

they part, without discussing –

unlikely they would have – dreams:

inscrutable churned mud, dead men on wires. 

          

5

 

By now it’s hard to keep track.

Is the quartet of horny

young people *aware of the convention

death and the script

require they follow?  Or do they,

penetrating the abandoned mansion, 

despise it, or have they actually forgotten?

Few establishing shots

establish moonless rainswept wreck (we’re talking

either El Cheapo Productions,

unusual subtlety, or both), but lots

of creepy music accompanies them.  Routed,

once they’re inside, by their boombox. 

– Aggressive Slut, Demure but Game,

Cute Thug, and Jokester with a trace of brains ...

Once inside:

cobwebs, strange portraits,

candles, dancing,

a joint and we’re down to bras,

the hope of less, and a hint

of individual pasts and motives, flaws.

At which, a Noise.

Violins return, presaging violence.

The Thug, surprisingly, suggests they leave,

but *Liebestod has brought them here

and they must find its source, and laugh at fear.

Should we split up and get killed?

Or stay together?  Amazingly,

the latter – through the upstairs rooms,

each with its symbols and phenomena

the tone of which is somehow merely sad;

and then, the music

rising and merging horribly with theirs,

to the basement.  Where an old couple

is having tea beside the boiler.

Vaguely professor and professor’s wife,

housedress and tweeds, they seem

alarmed but pleasant – ask

about parents and courses, moral development …

It’s the climax.  Dreadfully whole,

throats raw from not screaming, our heroes

have a choice.  To become the missing monster,

and spend an hour torturing

and killing the couple, or give up

on the film and probably the career.

The Old Ones wonder which it will be.

It is the moment of poetry.