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 thought I could / Help them
I thought they didn’t
Know they were dead
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
Shane McCrae teaches at Oberlin College and at Spalding University’s low-residency MFA in Writing Program. His most recent books are In the Language of My Captor (forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press in 2017) and The Animal Too Big to Kill (Persea Books, 2015). He has received a Whiting Writer’s Award, a fellowship from the NEA, and a Pushcart Prize.