The poem
The tightness and the nilness round that space when the car stops in the road, the troops inspect its make and number and, as one bends his face
towards your window, you catch sight of more on a hill beyond, eyeing with intent down cradled guns that hold you under cover
and everything is pure interrogation until a rifle motions and you move with guarded unconcerned acceleration—
a little emptier, a little spent as always by that quiver in the self, subjugated, yes, and obedient.
So you drive on to the frontier of writing where it happens again. The guns on tripods; the sergeant with his on-off mike repeating
data about you, waiting for the squawk of clearance; the marksman training down out of the sun upon you like a hawk.
And suddenly you're through, arraigned yet freed, as if you'd passed from behind a waterfall on the black current of a tarmac road
past armor-plated vehicles, out between the posted soldiers flowing and receding like tree shadows into the polished windscreen.