‘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.