Inspection
after the painting of the contemporary Russian artist, Maxim Kantor
Believe, if you will, that he isn't guilty.
But brighten the bare bulb a little at each denial.
The tile will glare, his tonsils burning
like the screams he chokes down to keep us off him.
When he's drunk on the sheer volume of our voices,
the quiet is such you can hear the dogs shitting in the dust.
When the yellow walls wave like some crazy oasis,
remember we'll lose our features, and faceless,
we'll drift from the center of these acts.
We're only instruments following orders.
In just a few hours after dinner and brandy with our wives,
this cell will be silent as angels, a space we never entered.
And later tonight when you cup your mistress's buttocks
in your fingers, you'll forget the stare in his rheumy eyes.
But for now, consider his filth, the animal quality of his moans.
His muscles are slack, hair falling out, his jaw can't hold
the phlegm in his mouth. One toe beneath your boot will crush
like a clove of garlic. Other men will be worse,
there will always be those that whisper of rats
and experiments, those who spread rumors
of transports to pits, those who tell jokes—always the jokes.
After a month you'll look back on your qualms and laugh
at yourself. Remember you're young and torture gets old
like everything else.
