In the Language of My Captor. Shane McCrae

       You’re here to see yourselves

Privacy

      I tell the keeper I don’t know

      What he or any white man means

      When he says privacy

      Especially

      In the phrase In the privacy

      Of one’s own home / I understand

      he thinks he means a kind of

      Militarized aloneness

      If he would listen I would tell him

      Privacy is impossible

      If one’s community is

      Not bound by love

      Instead I tell him where I’m from we

      Have no such concept

      If he thinks I am / Too wise

      he won’t speak honestly

      And so I make an / Effort to make

      my language fit his

      Idea of what I am

      I find with him and with his guests

      Because I’m on display in

      A cage with monkeys

      I / Must speak and act

      carefully to maintain / His privacy

      and // If he would listen I would tell him

      Where privacy

      Must be defended

      There is no privacy

      I have become an // Expert on the subject

      But I have also learned

      The keeper will not trust me / To understand

      even what he has taught me

What Do You Know About Shame

      Late very late long after

      The many families and the lone white man

      Who stayed long after

      The families had gone had gone

      Last night the keeper staggered to my cage / Weeping

      he said his wife

      Was leaving him

      And he would never see his son

      Again I said I did not understand

      Why he would never see his son again

      He said he was ashamed

      And his // Wife was ashamed

      and she was going back to

      Her people was his word

      and / Taking the child

      I said I did not understand

      Why he would never see his son again

      Again I said there would be no

      Ocean between his son and him

      No bars

      Between / Him and the ocean

      if there were an ocean

      And I said Surely I am making you

       A wealthy man

      you can // Afford to travel

       can you not

      The keeper stepped close to my cage

      and snarled / Your women / Tramp through the jungle

      with their tits out // What do you know about

      shame and I shouted You are drunk

      Go home and be / Drunk with your family

       While you still can

      He growled

      and struck the bar between us

      And stumbled back and fell

      How do you know a white man’s really hurt I laughed

      He / Stops crying

Privacy 2

      I tell the keeper I don’t know

      What he or any white man means

      When he says privacy

      Especially

      In the phrase In the privacy

      Of one’s own home / I understand

      he thinks he means a kind of

      Militarized aloneness

      If he would listen I would ask him whether

      The power / To enforce alone-

      ness and aloneness

      can exist together

      Instead I tell him where I’m from we

      Have no such con-

      cept if he thinks I am / Too wise

      he won’t speak honestly

      And so I talk the way the men

      He says are men like me

      Talk in the books he reads to me

      I understand

      Those books are not supposed to make me wise

      And yet I think perhaps

      They show me what he means

      By privacy // Perhaps

      by privacy he means / This

      certainty he has that

      The weapons he has made

      Will not be used against him

In the Language

      I cannot talk about the place I came from

      I do not want it to exist

      The way I knew it

      In the language of my captor

      The keeper asks me why I

      Refuse him this

      I think to anyone who came from / The place I came from

      It would be obvious

      but // I did not think my people

      Superior to other people before

      The keeper’s language has infected me

      I knew of // Few people

      Beyond the people / I knew

      before and when I met new people

      The first thing I assumed was

      they were just like me

      Perhaps even relatives

      Who had before my birth been lost

      In the jungle or on the plain

      Or on the other side of the mountain

      And so at first I thought the white men / Were ghosts

      one spoke my language

      And said that he had spoken to my father

      I did not fear them

      I thought they had been

      whitened by the sun / Like bones wandering

      I