Читать книгу The Collector of Bodies - Diane Glancy - Страница 16

1.

March 31st–April 2nd Jordan

On the road, the three-wheeled trucks overloaded

with people,

the hexagonal side-panels of metal,

silver, red, green,

like strange banners in a cathedral,

an ostrich feather on the grille.

2.

Above Amman, in the mountains, remote, windy, rainy,

a barefoot girl, a Bedouin, reads a schoolbook

the interpreter says is on Russian transportation.

If you told her how reading all that

she’s behind the world’s traffic

as she’s ever been in your western thought.

She’s reading wrong and out of date.

Their trucks would be your junkyard,

and you know how your country’s arrogance

makes you smug and you unwrap it

like a tick as if it’s simply uncontested.

The armed soldiers stand at checkpoints on the shore

where Russia peddles its hype to those who cannot know

the jabals,

wadis,

the windy villages, concrete-walled and cold-floored.

3.

You’re a visitor to a country near the beginning of history.

You’ve entered the mess of influence competing

with interpretation.

You fear your own heart, and clear away

with your only hand the barefoot Bedouin girl in her village

you pass through wanting to say you’re from a country