Читать книгу In the Language of My Captor - Shane McCrae - Страница 8

1

His God

I am the keeper tells

Me the most popular exhibit

You might not think this cheers me but it does

I’m given many opportunities

I like especially to ask the groups

Led by fat white men I am careful to

Never address the fat man but the group

How has it come // To pass

that I’m on this side of the bars

And you’re on that side

And Who stands in your shoes

You or the people you resemble

they don’t give me shoes // I say

Gesturing toward a zoo employee

and I smile

Often the people do not answer me

Often the fat man squints and says It real- // ly makes you think

Something like that or There

but for the grace of God / I tell the keeper they must be

The daughters and the sons of nearer gods

I tell him my gods had to stay behind

To watch my people / He likes it when I talk like that

the truth is I don’t know

The keeper when he’s drunk

Sometimes he says I’m lucky

To have been rescued from my gods

And I should thank the man who bought me

I used to laugh at him but now I grieve

I think // His god is not a god like mine / His god

Is not a mother not a father

not a hunter not a farmer

his / God is a stranger

from no country he has seen

Panopticon

The keeper put me in the cage with the monkeys

Because I asked to be

Put in the cage with the monkeys

Most of the papers say the monkeys

must // Remind me of my family

The liberal papers say the monkeys must

Remind me of my home

The papers don’t ask me

some days // I tuck notes explanations

Into soft monkey shits

and call white children to the bars

I warn the parents / But still they let their children come

And that’s my explanation / I am

their honest mirror

I say Whether you’re here

to see me or to see the monkeys

You’re here to see yourselves

Privacy

I tell the keeper I don’t know

What he or any white man means

When he says privacy

Especially

In the phrase In the privacy

Of one’s own home / I understand

he thinks he means a kind of

Militarized aloneness

If he would listen I would tell him

Privacy is impossible

If one’s community is

Not bound by love

Instead I tell him where I’m from we

Have no such concept

If he thinks I am / Too wise

he won’t speak honestly

And so I make an / Effort to make

my language fit his

Idea of what I am

I find with him and with his guests

Because I’m on display in

A cage with monkeys

I / Must speak and act

carefully to maintain / His privacy

and // If he would listen I would tell him

Where privacy

Must be defended

There is no privacy

I have become an // Expert on the subject

But I have also learned

The keeper will not trust me / To understand

even what he has taught me

What Do You Know About Shame

Late very late long after

The many families and the lone white man

Who stayed long after

The families had gone had gone

Last night the keeper staggered to my cage / Weeping

he said his wife

Was leaving him

And he would never see his son

Again I said I did not understand

Why he would never see his son again

He said he was ashamed

And his // Wife was ashamed

and she was going back to

Her people was his word

and / Taking the child

I said I did not understand

Why he would never see his son again

Again I said there would be no

Ocean between his son and him

No bars

Between / Him and the ocean

if there were an ocean

And I said Surely I am making you

A wealthy man

you can // Afford to travel

can you not

The keeper stepped close to my cage

and snarled / Your women / Tramp through the jungle

with their tits out // What do you know about

shame and I shouted You are drunk

Go home and be / Drunk with your family

While you still can

He growled

and struck the bar between us

And stumbled back and fell

How do you know a white man’s really hurt I laughed

He / Stops crying

Privacy 2

I tell the keeper I don’t know

What he or any white man means

When he says privacy

Especially

In the phrase In the privacy

Of one’s own home / I understand

he thinks he means a kind of

Militarized aloneness

If he would listen I would ask him whether

The power / To enforce alone-

ness and aloneness

can exist together

Instead I tell him where I’m from we

Have no such con-

cept if he thinks I am / Too wise

he won’t speak honestly

And so I talk the way the men

He says are men like me

Talk in the books he reads to me

I understand

Those books are not supposed to make me wise

And yet I think perhaps

They show me what he means

By privacy // Perhaps

by privacy he means / This

certainty he has that

The weapons he has made

Will not be used against him

In the Language

I cannot talk about the place I came from

I do not want it to exist

The way I knew it

In the language of my captor

The keeper asks me why I

Refuse him this

I think to anyone who came from / The place I came from

It would be obvious

but // I did not think my people

Superior to other people before

The keeper’s language has infected me

I knew of // Few people

Beyond the people / I knew

before and when I met new people

The first thing I assumed was

they were just like me

Perhaps even relatives

Who had before my birth been lost

In the jungle or on the plain

Or on the other side of the mountain

And so at first I thought the white men / Were ghosts

one spoke my language

And said that he had spoken to my father

I did not fear them

I thought they had been

whitened by the sun / Like bones wandering

I thought I could / Help them

I thought they didn’t

Know they were dead