THOUGHTS FROM UNDERGROUND


When I first reached this country
I hated it
and I hated it moe each year:

in summer the light a
violent blur, the heat
thick as a swamp,
the green things fiercely
shoving themselves upwards, the
eyelids bitten by insects

In winter our teeth were brittle
with cold. We fed on squirrels.
At night the house cracked.
In the mornings, we thawed
the bad bread over the stove.

Then we were made successful
and I felt I out to love
this country.
      I said I loved it
and my mind saw double.

I began to forget myself
in the middle
of sentences. Events
were split apart

I fought. I constructed
desperare paragraphs of praise, everyone
ought to love it because

and set them up at intervals

      due to natural resources, native industry, superior
     penitentiaries
      we will all be rich and powerful

flat as highway billboards

      who can doubt it, look how
      fast Belleville is growing

(though it is still no place for an english gentleman)