bundled
bodies of men, gray padded jackets, outsized gloves,
heads bent
against the wind. They lunge, weaving
among the
scattering of luggage carts, hard at what must be
half the
world’s work, loading and unloading.
Mounded
snow faintly gray and sculpted into what seems
the entire
vocabulary of resignation. It shines
in the one
patch of sun, is lustered
with the
precipitate of the exhaust of turbine engines,
the burnt
carbons of Precambrian forests. Life feeding life
feeding
life in the usual, mindless way. The colonizer’s
usual
prefab, low-roofed storage sheds in the distance
pale beige
and curiously hopeful in their upright verticals
like boys
in an army, or like the spruce and hemlock forest
on low
hillsides beyond them. And beyond those, half seen
in the
haze, range after range of snowy mountains
in the
valleys of which—moose feeding along the frozen streams,
snow foxes
hunting ptarmigan in the brilliant whiteness—
no human
could survive for very long, and which it is the imagination’s
intensest,
least possible longing to inhabit.
This is a
day of diplomatic lull. Iraq seems to have agreed
to withdraw
from Kuwait with Russian assurances
that the
government of Hussein will be protected. It won’t happen,
thousands
of young men will be killed, shot, blown up,
buried in
the sand, an ancient city bombed,
but one
speaks this way of countries, as if they were entities
with wills.
Iraq has agreed. Russia has promised. A bleak thing,
dry snow
melting on the gray, salted tarmac.
One of the
men on the airstrip is waving his black,
monstrously
gloved hands at someone. He seems very much alive,
strong
body, rhythmic, efficient stride. He knows
what he’s
supposed to do. He’s getting our clothes to us
at the
stop. Flowerburst ties, silky underwear.
There are
three young Indians, thin faces, high cheekbones,
skin the
color of old brass, chatting quietly across from me
in what
must be an Athabascan dialect. A small child crying
mildly,
sleepily, down the way, a mother murmuring in English.
Soft hum of
motors stirring, through the plane’s low, dim fuselage
the stale
air, breathed and breathed, we have been sharing.
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