Torsade Literary Space A Failure of Intelligence: Eleventh Battle Stations
The Folly
Battle Stations
A Failure of Intelligence
You’re new
We have gone wrong in this affair, and it is not entirely
a fault of inexperience, however
it does appear you’ve tipped into error. I should like
to call attention to this failing
An operative must cultivate his own informants
He is expected to. He will have types of things…
You will. That you wish to know about the subject.
You are in charge and are the meter of reward
No, I don’t mean the measure
I mean it’s you pays out…or doesn’t, you know.
As to certain foibles you are trained to keep a weather eye
The deadly sins
pride, greed, vanity
no joke in our sort of business
yet readily you slide into the trap
Your man begins to order you about
You meet him in the usual way, but you forget
He mentions ‘something good’ just come upon
your career feels in the doldrums, nothing’s on
Or hell on every other front is breaking loose
while your own stand sits empty of custom
easy to fear you’ll be withdrawn and sent
to the north of Scotland
‘If I may…’
The colonel greets interruption…rather not interruption,
as he’d fallen silent—but what he’d very much like to call
Insubordination. With a silence frostier, prolonged
towards encouraging self-reflection, which he doubts will come
They are all Oxford chaps in this new branch
No army private would have dared
To speak of all words, those three
In answer to a superior officer
A Failure of Intelligence
Dark Humour
(2020, Stephanie Foster)