The Adventures of Ibn Opcit

Day 2. Wish You Were Here

114 Day 2. Wish You Were Here Players Ibn Opcit Natasha Ish A darkened stage. At center, under a spot, is our Cosmonaut. Stage right, under spot, Natasha appears. Ish Ibn, this is Ish. Natasha Ish. Ibn Natasha! I thought I’d never hear your voice again. Ish I finally found your frequency—and a radio that’s something more than a tin can on a string. I’m calling from a Moscow TV station. Ibn And here am I, a floating voice on the single sideband. They left me behind at the airport. What happened to you? Ish I still have this job—and you are still my story. Ibn Natasha, I was hoping I was more than that. . . . Ish I don’t mean a “story” story. I mean . . . you are a man in search of dignity and citizenship. To my readers you are the citizen at the end of the world. What happens to you matters to them—and to me. 115 So what does the world look like to a poet circling the planet at 200 miles? Ibn To live by sonic booms, by ramjet come-alongs is not what Ibn had in mind. They send me up to ride above the ganglia of nations, singing “Workers of the world, ignite.” They hang me above the governments of earth to say, “We got communism; it’s better than democracy.” Well, I got news. It’s all gimcrackery. The earth was a planet before it was a globe. A blue ball, shiny and wet, before cartographers. It was a belle ball, corrugated green, before borders were geometered and etched. Ibn in his little boat looks down. From 200 miles he sees how much God loves a rolling stone. Ish Can you see our host, the USSR? Ibn Over the Soviet Onion nothing much to see today until the fog makes up its mind, nothing but a power plant and its smoking connection to the sky. Say . . . is that Chernobyl? Is that the Soviets’ gift to the planet, that smoldering pile of radiation gone wild? Up here at the O of Soviet endeavor we see how the logic of strap and belt have overcome the retrograde aspects of their economy. The merchants sell fake goods, the customers pay in bogus script under their definition of a sound economy. By all accounts their product is both gross and national. By all accounts it’s a poor, trashy empire. 116 Ish What do you see now? Ibn All over Africa the sun is rising. Glazes of ice on its physique, Kilimanyaro, that planet pimple, fires in the kiln of the Great Rift. Across the valley of a hundred miles dust pillars rise like dervishes, like suggestions from God, several at a time. All over Africa the sun is rising on ungovernables. Throughout Africa a medley of burial techniques is meeting every need. Ish Can you see Usurpia? Ibn I see kingdoms of vanished shade, places overwhelmed with what’s not there. Ish Well, Usurpia is Usurpia no more. The country has a new name and a new President for Life. Nakumbo didn’t last two weeks. He saw his future poised on the tip of a spear, and he gave a speech. But the mob was not itself that day. First it cheered him, then it tore him limb from limb. Ibn And here is the lamb of North America, to its southern mother still umbilicalled! Over Washington we see the monumental inclines of the builder’s fathmic art— 117 Ish Spillman Sponneker has his problems, too. After dumping us in Moscow he flew home, straight into the arms of the back-bench bomb throwers. Bernard E. Tacklezone has testified on the scandal at the Food and Drugged Administration. Senator Penfield Blowfish has made a motion, and Senator Hudden-Huttenstutter has seconded. The impeachment proceedings are proceeding. Ibn They were as famous as their sojourns will permit. Over America Opcit learns of scope and scale. If the Lord were to scratch a match on the Rockies, it would take three days for that match to sizzle and quell in the Atlantic. And where He drew his finger to complete the cross the Mississippi filled and filed. Above plains optically ground by glaciers, over farmhouses noisy at night with snoring his capsule creeps toward Phoenix, toward the flatulent B-52s of the Arizona National Guard. What Ibn sees is farm...