Imagine reduced to a field the haze shed from a summit, meaning hair
or rain on a bush, and the liters of water chugging rock and waste
on a falling course. Actually—this is a floating gas station in the middle
of the ocean, a pump of fuel and war, the crafting of air into a rocky freedom.
Even the haze is a rush of jet fuel vapor flooding the heights of ancient volcanic
voluminous coughing, a united perfume of task with the debt of our violent energy.
Technicians pull oil samples out of every aircraft that passes through,
analyzing them to make sure an engine won’t break when the war is resumed.
If something is wrong, the problem is fixed. But if you step away from the boom
and listen for what sounds untie themselves from echo you will measure
a rough silence, the dissolution of breaker into the tentative bend of foam.
In a paradise with incredible ocean views everywhere there is no attempt
to seal the error in a body if it never was made to take off from a runway.
Light dips below the face the cliff at the foot of the flight line as if there were
an end to the movement of fuel, and all watching say very pretty, say
the hour is almost nonexistent. On the shore the water continues like
diagnosis to break. Fall of night on nine thousand civilians in formation
beside a tank farm and this is just an evening. During spring and summer
residents line the narrow cobblestone streets and sit on their rooftops
their heavy walls to watch weekly street bullfights and they always
return the beast to its field and clean what it left and they always
tie a rope to the monstrous heft even as they tease with the use
of umbrella the terrifying horn and the tourists sit safe far away.
A limited assurance of uniformed men surveying the road, the rope
in their hands, the adjustment of pull and slack; the batch of increasingly
strong bulls protected from the cost of their furious exertion. This is to
not forget the allowance of care / extends its space well and will house us.
New units are being built with roofs and fences constructed to expand upon arrival
so expect to wave and wave and wave. If a base is a house why leave
the host sick outside the gate at dawn after a night so hard and careless.
The ships pull the gold in the bay until the leaving of morning, diffuse wreck of sun
into vision of outdoor pool and youth center and rollerbladers in the ring
of the base’s attention. What is a Base Exchange but a structure allowing entry
to so few. The locals surrender to the gate hinge, how its swing is affected
by the strength of the U.S. dollar relative to the federal interest. Lajes does not
provide for everyone, for ceaseless hands counting fingers the ways for living
in fuel. Suppose some of the wreckage hung calm in the tissue of a life
beside the military fences. Might this be forming close bonds with the community.
Eerie that it is so hard to find such evidence of a body so fully integrated
as a base alive in everything on the island. It doesn’t take long to set in.
So Americans live, turn to each other, and leave the island saying
cooperation between Americans and the Portuguese locals is harmonious
as if all were side by side with fuel in the particles of their home.
The rust of futuristic aircraft is still the waste of time and the field
cannot hold its enduring breath. Through the haze of disquiet spat
from the chest the phlegm of the base—a pasture, serene.
Note
Homophonic translation of the article “Lajes Field, Azores: Facilities, Cost of Living, Housing, Employment” originally authored by Carl Surran and posted by George Morris to the website for InCharge Debt Solutions.
