Garbage Bears

By David Harrison
 

Is this the future, or is it the past?
-- David Quammen, “The Monster of God”

The square gray tenements
of Racadau,
wedged into the arms
of the map-wound
that is the Carpathians.

From their small stained windows,
the residents can see
the wildest regions of Europe:
hardwood forests of beech and pine;
park-like meadows
where shepherds watch over
their ancient, chiming flocks;
the mirrored faces of high mountain slopes,
wind-polished granite.

This view is no mere nostalgia for them.
They come from there,
these unwilling slum-dwellers
lost to the countryside.
The Devil moved them here,
collectivizing their farms
and their herds
out of existence.
This city,
more than anywhere else,
is an invention,
as are their lives
as the factory workers
they have become.

“We got even with him,
Ceausescu,”
they say,
choking out a frightening laugh.
Every Christmas now,
they celebrate his death
from the confines
of the prison
he made just for them.

* * * * *
The bears come every night
to the dumpsters of Racadau.
Ursii Gundieri,
the garbage bears,
they descend
from the canyons
to feed.

Slow-ambling,
enormous,
unafraid,
they move ghost-like
beneath the orange arc lights,
and climb into
the echoing sky-blue of metal.

Crowds gather
to watch the bears eat.
Not just the tenement dwellers
who used to live
among them in the forest.
But also the Euro-posh,
who come after the clubs
have closed for the night.
And the cabbies waiting
for the last night’s fare.

It has become a tradition in Racadau
for children turning twelve
to spend the night outside,
alone with the bears.
Without their parents
for the first time,
these children watch
as mother bears
feed their cubs,
and sense for the first time
that some day soon
the cubs will have to
fend for themselves,
maybe even battle
their own mothers
for the right
to enter these dumpsters.

* * * * *

Sanitation engineers
design ingenious ways
to keep the bears out.
Self-locking lids.
Long, narrow chutes.
But always,
their innovations are undone.
The tenants of Racadau
do not want the bears
to stay away.
They leave the gates and lids
open on purpose.
Some just set their bags
alongside the dumpsters,
saving the bears the trouble
of climbing in and out.

Bureaucrats threaten
to have the bears captured,
sold to zoos and circuses.
They come to inspect,
shake their heads
at the open dumpster lids,
make notes
on their officiously-held clipboards.
But each time before they leave,
they look up just once,
and see those faces,
the color of concrete,
staring at them,
daring them
to take their bears away.
These city officials and wildlife managers
remember Ceausescu
in that façade of stone faces,
and see
that the people of the tenements
have nothing to lose
but these bears.

Their recommendations
get lost or set aside.

* * * * *
There is an old expression
some still remember
from their grandparents:
“A forest without bears-
it’s empty.”
In Racadau,
it’s true of the city as well.


 

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