The government clerk
fired-off forms
like a croupier dealing blackjack.
They flew bewilderingly fast,
duplicate pages, legal disclaimers
and lengthy questionnaires,
initialled, signed, stamped.
My modest transaction
at the fluorescent counter
had the important air
of affairs of state.
As if all the way up the chain of command,
where some grave mandarin
will cock his brow
pondering my paperwork.
And I stood a little straighter,
a valued citizen
civilly served.
The bureaucracy
runs on paper,
boxes checked, receipts relayed.
On functionaries, like this good lady
presiding over this orderly place.
Her small principality
of shabby chairs, and weary supplicants,
in work clothes, and baseball caps
blankly shuffling in line.
She smiled nicely
in her brisk competent way.
And I smiled back, expressing my thanks,
gathering up
my allotment of paper
and staggering out.
Which I shall dutifully save.
Bequeath
like some cherished possession
to my heirs, and descendants.
A Delphic riddle
from beyond the grave,
they'll gamely attempt
to puzzle out.
My simple transaction consumed a vast forest of forms.
The lady behind the counter was cheerful and competent: a good civil servant, good at her job. And the entire process was reassuringly efficient. But all it produced was a pile of paper that will be filed away, never to be looked at again.
Of course, I gathered up the papers she conferred, and took them home. I'm not quite sure what for; yet feeling I must honour the process by dutifully filing them away somewhere. And so I imagine a lifetime of inscrutable forms -- yellowing, and gathering dust -- puzzled over after my death; because surely they must have been vitally important to have been so diligently saved!
I think a good alternate title -- and there be a million little teasers you could think of here -- would be "Paperwork". But what I like about this choice is its enticing mystery: you really can't resist reading on. And it's utterly unnecessary specificity: just like the punctiliousness of form after form. And one of the thoughts I had was of this small office and its regular inhabitants -- not just the bureaucracy it contains, but the actual physical space. To me, it's a forgettable place that occupies a brief moment in my life. But to the ladies working there (and they were all ladies) it's like a second home, with all the sweet personal touches of coffee mugs and loved ones in picture frames; as well as a community, with all the complicated interpersonal dynamics of which a client like me has absolutely no idea. So to me, it's an address; but to them, almost a domestic space, more lived-in than passed through.
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