IMMATURE SONG

I have heard that adolescence is a recent invention,

A by-product of progress, one of Capitalism’s

Suspended transitions between one state and another,

Like refugee camps, internment camps, like the Fields

Of Concentration in a campus catalogue. Summer

Camps for teenagers. When I was quite young

My miscomprehension was that “Concentration Camp”

Meant where the scorned were admonished to concentrate,

Humiliated: forbidden to let the mind wander away.

“Concentration” seemed just the kind of punitive euphemism

The adult world used to coerce, like the word “Citizenship”

On the report cards, graded along with disciplines like History,

English, Mathematics. Citizenship was a field or

Discipline in which for certain years I was awarded every

Marking period a “D” meaning Poor. Possibly my first political

Emotion was wishing they would call it Conduct, or Deportment.

The indefinitely suspended transition of the refugee camps

Must be a poor kind of refuge—subjected to capricious

Kindness and requirements and brutality, the unchampioned

Refugees kept between childhood and adulthood, having neither.

In the Holy Land for example, or in Mother Africa.

At that same time of my life when I heard the abbreviation

“DP” for Displaced Person I somehow mixed it up with

“DTs” for Delirium Tremens, both a kind of stumbling called

By a childish nickname. And you my poem, you are like

An adolescent: confused, awkward, self-preoccupied, vaguely

Rebellious in a way that lacks practical focus, moving without

Discipline from thing to thing. Do you disrespect Authority merely

Because it speaks so badly, because it deploys the lethal bromides

With a clumsy conviction that offends your delicate senses?—but if

Called on to argue such matters as the refugees you mumble and

Stammer, poor citizen, you get sullen, you sigh and you look away.