846. CANTIOKA'S SCREED

CANTIOKA'S
ANTI-IMMIGRANT
SCREED
(an overheard verbatim)
"What writers used to do, bomb-makers and
gunmen now do. They have taken the territory
once inhabited by writers : entering the inner-life
of the culture. We are, by reflection then, so
lost as to be obscured, so vile as to be obliterated.
In fire. In blast. In all those things fast. Unrecognizable?
The wind in the marsh trees has more sense and
presence now than we do. We should execute the
bureaucrats and careerists and just walk away
from it all. But yet, alas, it is really ourselves who
have, after all, allowed this to be. Taxpaying
trinketeers and moralists of malaise, claiming
to be yet free!
-
And now the fast-talking Spaniard steps in.
But these alone are not the men from Spain;
these instead are a South-American mixed
race crazed mestizo Andean Peruvian Mayan
Colombian Hispaniola horde with all their
little women and carriages and babies and
bales. There is nothing to be done, it is
already too late. They sit, these migrant,
errant laborers, and try to read the language
on the wall, locate a place, find a reference
they can keep in this unknown new land.
'Yet we are human!' they mutter, 'and so
we are', they say. All of us are, I answer,
but that so little matters here, it's just not
worth the saying. Your meaningless
countervailing brings us down."