Srikanth Reddy: Section E

This is not a history of the world. I acted as I did. If it helps I have come to appreciate the frailty of memory - things that never happened & the things that did happen.

*

Dr. S. just arrived in New York. S. depicting his homeland. The players that ask why the dying man S. should now live. The blindfolded minister. A stranger urging me to complain. The confusing heart. The minister with the advanced situation. Complicated Russians. Americans with gun-boats. G. in a Western suit quite the best I saw on anybody during the revolution shaking hands with the Princess. And suddenly children insisting. Please do not go to the cemetery. Stay at home all the time.

*

Our helicopters approached the cemetery. I looked down & could see the burial site. Rows of graves the teeth of never. A man in a secret room whispered in the dark. An old man with my face. I could not understand a word he said. I said do you think we shall ever get out of here? He nodded uncertainly. Unnerving the darkness. I wondered whether our exit would be easier than our entry.

*

The thread of out of which to weave the ruined era.

*

The armistice that marked the end of war had been signed a month before I was born. War broke out the year I came of age. Otherwise my early years were uneventful. One day the train stopped & we all had to get out. Some of us were badly beaten but we managed to make our way home. In the city's cellars I could escape. Underground literature was circulated & I read it. Air Policies of Section 45. The Division Cycles. Motorized Light. Motorized Mud. The Call for Order. Pinpoint Heaven. Evening in the Splinter Field. The See-Through Father. The Constant Day. Radio & Ordinary Movements. I had hidden in obscure & scattered places information on the physical assembly of a little train. In the basement listening to the bombs falling overhead I might fashion a cattle wagon overloaded with produce poultry freight of every kind & as many passengers as could be squeezed aboard. C. who was not well rested on a pile of straw. I perched on a crate of apples. Our car had no windows & the train never stopped.

[previously published in 'Gulf Coast']