Turbulence

Somewhere over the weather, the lights stay on. A voice says it is nothing. The voice is always calm. The drinks come round on schedule though the floor is at an angle now, and everyone agrees to call the dropping just a little weather. No one up there is flying this. The seat in front is empty. They handed off the wheel so long ago they cannot say to whom, or whether. Each one signs the form below them, swears the work above checks out, nobody reads the line they sign, nobody flies the line they swore. The cabin holds its courtesy. The cabin holds its rot. You watch the city tilt below and you have seen this tilt before. They told you peace was permanent. They told you it was won. They wrote it like an ending. The ending was a lie. The borders fold back over us, the old hate puts its uniform on, and the seatbelt sign comes on, and no one asks the sky. We are strapped into the same plane, going down, and the trays are still served, and the smiles are still around. There is no one in the cockpit. There has been no one for a while. So we order one more drink and we descend in style. (going down, going down) Hold the glass. Pretend it is the weather. Hold the glass. We were never flying this together. The institutions were a theatre. You can see the painted set. The men who run the panels never built a single wing. They improvise the gravity, they bluff the altimeter, and call it expertise, and call the falling a routine thing. And under all the cabin lights, the truth nobody wanted: we were never wise, never kind, never the better kind of crowd. Just frightened, ordinary, fairly bad, all of us, the whole flight long, seen at last with the masks off as the floor comes up too loud. (fasten, fasten) You used to think the danger was a story about others. It was always the same cabin. It was always your own row. The pilot is a rumour. The descent is not a metaphor. And the strange thing, the worst thing, is how calm it is below. (no one is flying this) We are strapped into the same plane, going down, and the trays are still served, and the smiles are still around. There is no one in the cockpit. There has been no one for a while. So we order one more drink and we descend in style. (going down, going down) Hold the glass. Pretend it is the weather. Hold the glass. We were never flying this together. The lights stay on. The voice stays calm. Somewhere a tray slides off a tray. (fasten, fasten) Strapped in, drink in hand, descending toward a thing that no one ever steered. (going down)