Captains in Captivity

She came to see him in the safehouse   

          to interface   

without biography or autobiography.   

I am, she told him, the only one here   

who cares whether you continue   

to live. I care,   

          he said, but it was formulaic.   

His propensity, not a precondition.   

          The ground beneath his feet   

smelled of everything   

          other men’s feet   

had ever ground into it. It was blank   

for all horrors, all aftermaths. A fly   

          dazzled in a sunbeam   

through the windowpane. Like water,   

he seemed to say,   

          & she agreed with him.   

I would like water, he repeated. She   

pretended not to hear him,   

because that was the sort of slippage   

          that could save him   

& suddenly she was not against it.   

He could continue to live   

if he could continue to mean himself   

or anything   

          as poorly as he had just then.