Meg Schoerke
March 2005

Another Country


At first, tourists find life here whimsical:
how charming to come across an open pasture
in the midst of the city, or to encounter elk
serenely blocking subway entrances,
roses on beaches, forests in factories,
blue-hooded taxi drivers whispering prayers,
and amulets always the height of fashion.
How challenging to guess one's way along
curved streets whose names change at odd intervals—
Temptation Drive, Glass Alley, Rhombus Place—
one highway, infinitely divisible,
mined with dead ends and spiraling roundabouts.
And how urbane, how cultured we must be
to speak Chinese at dusk, German at noon,
Greek when the tide turns, Gaelic on the phone,
and only polysyllables at parties.
In fact, the National Council to Promote
Rumor (which works, we've heard, at the behest
of the Ministry to Increase the Population)
has spread bright words so far beyond the border
that many travel here to seek delight
and can't imagine that they'll never find
the right train out, or even a road that doesn't
meander straight into oblivion.

We comfort ourselves by thinking that to some
Caprice may seem delightful: symmetry,
marriage, and mathematics, along with custom,
foundered an age ago—or perhaps last week.
And though we have no seasons, we can always
count on the weather to change (our foremost
industry, the gambling parlors, sometimes
bets people's lives on drought or hurricane);
the weather fuels our commerce: rustic vanes
like horizontal ferris wheels atop
skyscrapers garner power for the cities,
until the wind stops dead or lightning strikes
diminish the need for electricity.

We have a few diversions: gaslight theatre
(quaint in spite of fiery curtain calls)
and circuses in mourning, but our most
popular shows are those in which nothing happens:
tableau vivant is currently the rage.
For entertainment—apart from the common risk
of walking the streets—some seek out city hall
where they can view one of our aphorisms
in action: Every poet carries with him
the debris of a lawyer. Members of the jury
are called to serve as witnesses in trials
of invention, where the prosecutors pit
pun, paradox, hyperbole, and pathos
against the swollen schemes of the defense.
Yet even into those august, gilt chambers
accident falls: the court stenographer
spontaneously combusts; pipes burst and floods
dampen the proceedings; chandeliers
drop without warning or discreetly rain
prism shards like glittering knives upon us.

We can't admit we've grown accustomed to it:
blood on the windshield, broken bones,
explosions, plague, and flesh slit by stilettoes
no one has thrown. Whether the lilac blooms
in office suites or alleys, whether the scents
of mint and sawdust mingle in the air,
whether we work, or play at work like children,
we only know that each new victim stricken
solves our most subversive aphorism:
Death is as constant as a fickle lover.

From Anatomical Venus (Word Press 2004).