A poem a day in April from Rutgers English PhD students and friends.

Thursday, April 4, 2013

"Everything's Been Recruited"*

To learn which side you're on
in Our Moral Universe
you pick someone to follow
through the city streets
then see how far you'll go.
If you enter his foyer, oy
vey, then you are on our side.
If you go into her boudoir,
that far, you are on the side
of the enemy. If you board
the plane, you might find
yourself a red name on a
black list. If you feel only
a terror of the domestic
but not a terroir foreign,
we have a remedy for that,
but it can only be prescribed
if you were wed in a way
our instruments can detect
and if you have never suffered
from a similar terror before.
They administrate analogy but
we only want you to show us,
through accumulated choices
and the small acts you perform
each day, habitually,
which side you are on.
Till the earth. Kill the earth.
This land, that flavor.
Swallow scoops of wet dirt.
Which side are you on?



*Caryl Churchill, Far Away

3 comments:

  1. Yeah! they just want you to show what side you're on, what's wrong with that?! I mean we. Loving the rhymes & loved feeling sure that I knew what "everything's been recruited" meant even though I couldn't place it as being from _Far Away_. Spooky!

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  2. taught FAR AWAY to my undergrads today and 90% of them hated it but the ones that didn't were as if under a spell

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