“Have you ever had a dump in Ascension?”
the man of the world asked.
“This reminds me of it.”
Inside the old CCCP regional building
the men queued for their morning relief
clutching pages of pravda
at doorless cubicles in ascending order.
The commandant used to shit first at the top,
then the major and less major players
then the squaddies squatting
in the great levelling position
which slopes till the lowliest
egalitarian condition
is to proffer your bottom
at the bottom.
Here the entire party’s neoclassic discardment
conforms with the monument of its architecture,
slides hugely along a corrupt
back channel of emolument
and down down down
that huge hole in the argument.