‘To own a place where God is thought to be palpably present inspires a feeling perilously close to owning God.’
THE ACCIDENTAL EMPIRE, Gershom Gorenberg
Once the Empire’s Supreme Command had declared
the Coastal Territory ‘infidel-clean’,
the Empire’s Survey Force – with its tankers
containing drinking water and fuel oil,
its flat-bed lorries with pre-fabricated
accommodation blocks, toilets, showers,
its refrigerated food trucks and its mobile
generators – could proceed with confidence,
noting the drifts of refuse, the leaning
glassless windows, the skewed slabs
of concrete, the intermittent sharp scent
of putrefaction in the dusty air.
Occasionally they were surprised
by a bougainvillea still blooming
on a demolished wall, or a wooden shelf
of books still intact in a fallen house,
but the pools of drying sewage, and the piles
of broken furniture were predictable.
They established their base in the courtyard
of the Coastal Territory’s Holy Site –
with its fountains and its orange trees –
the birthplace of the Empire’s Patriarch,
and, throughout the cleansing, untouched.
From the arcaded gallery at the top
of the Patriarch’s mosaic-encrusted
tower all of the land could be seen,
the mountains in the east, the sea in the west,
the geometric blocks of streets and gardens –
and, inland, some leagues away, north and south
the Empire’s frontier posts and distant cities.
On the first day, the Force began its work
in sub-teams on foot and with drones:
some estimating the amount of rubble,
and the cost of clearing it; others
what should be re-built, for whom and at what cost;
others how the coast and the foothills
might become theme parks and tourist resorts.
The children appeared on the second day –
in the ruined shadows of a campus
with a museum, library and a school –
always far off, singly, then in pairs;
by day’s end, perhaps a dozen, some maimed,
some seemingly whole, standing close together,
watching from a distance like a silent,
impassive muster of witnesses.
‘Withdraw’, ordered the Supreme Command.
On the third day, after the Survey Force’s
long caravan was safely far beyond
the Territory’s borders, the Empire’s Air Force
carpet-bombed the ruined campus.
By David Selzer