The Incinerator

The Incinerator

The Incinerator

I.

You, domain of debris and ash;
whose fire constructed your black towers?

In whose excited furnace fire
and fiery science dared to collude?

Which architect designed your walls
of bricks and charred human sinews?

Whose pestle crushed the bones and lives
to fashion mortar for cobblestones?

Which creator made the people the fuel
to burn as torches on coal-black nights?

Which authority sanctioned the heat
that melted nature to mould your towns?

Your proud, infernal landmarks are raised
by whom? By whose dire commandments?


II.
After Jacques Derrida

You say this is the end
of history; I sense

fresh fumes rising
from the wreckage. You say

this is not at all
a wreckage, this wonderful

destination. You note
the revolutions and the fires

naming us the victors
of the “timeless” conflict. I feel

nothing is timeless;
humanity has always been

a victim and an effect
of time’s cruelties. You point

at the palaces
erected upon the ruins, the Light

on the Hill; “at the end
of the tunnel”. I’m suffocating

and smouldering in the furnaces
of your Kingdom. I see

there’s never been
such horror, not even at the first

apocalypse when your likes saw
the Four Riders. Or was it all

a macabre fantasy? You say
you’re not a fantasist but

an Enlightened observer. You cite
philosophers and scientists

and declare that you’re not
a fanatic. I am an observer too

and have seen carrions extracted
from bombed ruins and charred

martyrs in urns paraded
down the streets. I’ve smelt

the cooked flesh of
the children devoured by the fires

of your Cold War. I find
the devastating appeal

of the scent of your hubris
utterly rancid. You repeat this

is “the end of history”; you sport
a white armband and wave

your Cross and celebrate and expand
your Law in place of

Justice; you say civilisation’s been
perfected via Christianity,

the Enlightenment and Free Market
Capitalism. Yet I stare at the infernos

of history’s unstoppable
barbarities. I watch my own

skin blister and melt in the endless
flames; and I know my cells

are cinders and my words the scars
of past and present burnings; for

my presence is the chimney-pipe
where the smokes and spectres

merge above the high-rise
turrets of your fortresses

where the despised are disposed of
in the oven; and your children

grin and warm their hands
and rejoice in the “happy ending”

of a grotesque, endless history.


III.

He fed my passport to the flames
and rubbed his hands above the fire.

His frosted fingers trembled. I
saw my breath linger like a ghost

a transient fog. It disappeared
into the night’s bleak, biting air.

At our latitude, the winter’s
cold stung our skin and shook our bones.

“We’ll have to cross the border now
before the guards restart the watch,”

he spoke as I beheld my face
crinkle amid the fading flames.

My picture, parents, date-of-birth,
my name and my nationality

were soon cinders, and I shivered
and buried my hands in my jacket.