Listen the voice is American it would reach you it has wiring in its swan’s neck
where it is
always turning
round to see behind itself as it has no past to speak of except some nocturnal
journals written in woods where the fight has just taken place or is about to
take place
for place
the pupils have firelight in them where the man a surveyor or a tracker still has
no idea what
is coming
the wall-to-wall cars on the 405 for the ride home from the cubicle or the corner
office – how big
the difference – or the waiting all day again in line till your number is
called it will be
called which means
exactly nothing as no one will say to you as was promised by all eternity ‘ah son, do you
know where you came from, tell me, tell me your story as you have come to this
Station’ – no, they
did away with
the stations
and the jobs
the way of
life
and your number, how you hold it, its promise on its paper,
if numbers could breathe each one of these would be an
exhalation, the last breath of something
and then there you have it: stilled: the exactness: the number: your
number. That is why they
can use it. Because it was living
and now is
stilled. The transition from one state to the
other – they
give, you
receive – provides its shape.
A number is always hovering over something beneath it. It is
invisible, but you can feel it. To make a sum
you summon a crowd. A large number is a form
of mob. The larger the number the more
terrifying.
They are getting very large now.
The thing to do right
away
is to start counting, to say it is my
turn, mine to step into
the stream of blood
for the interview,
to say I
can do it, to say I
am not
one, and then say two, three, four and feel
the blood take you in from above a legion
single file heading out in formation
across a desert that will not count.
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