We have the full complement of the requisite barriers:
Barbed wire, barren landscape, unpleasant canines,
Stark metallic towers with vaguely menacing turrets and gunsights
(Though they are remote, poorly lighted,
Perched high enough that I suspect they may be occupied
By mannequins or scarecrows),
And what cannot be attained physically
Is augmented by other means,
Breakfasts at mid-day, bits of bread in the blackest part of night,
Light as dark, dark as light.
We tell our company this and that of the news of the world:
Half–and-quarter-truths, innuendos of some plausibility,
Outright truths as well, but told with the most outrageous leers,
Put forth in a tone which suggest that such things could never be,
(I have come to appreciate Pilate’s question,
For truth is a singular thing,
Valid within the limits of one’s mind,
No more than a lower-case notion
When butting up against those of others),
And I tell myself that this is all something that needs to be done,
That perhaps there is no greater good
Than a certain regularity,a certain order of things,
But I am unsettled by the memory of an episode
Some three days past, where one of this assemblage
(I suspect the person in question was female,
But we keep our band well-shorn, and they are costumed
In rather shapeless and gray tunics
Which, given the lapse of time
And the long intervals between our own re-supply,
Look suspiciously like our own garments)
Look in my direction with what fervor she could muster,
All but barking You! You will be forgiven none of this!
And I was left perplexed by her admonition,
Which, as I began to readying myself for dinner
(Scrubbing my neck, my face, my hands,
Trying to rid myself of the damnable dust
Which is omnipresent, unavoidable, beyond eradication)
Lingered, as I could not for the life of me
Comprehend the calculus which would mark me,
A relative speck, a cog, a mere functionary,
As the one to be singled out.