The Cinnamon Peeler (5 page)

But there is no history or philosophy or metaphor with us.

The problem is the toughness of the Adidas shoe

its three stripes gleaming like fish decoration.

The story is Russell’s arm waving out of the green of a field.

The plot of the afternoon is to get to Bellrock

through rapids, falls, stink water

and reach the island where beer and a towel wait for us.

That night there is not even pain in our newly used muscles

not even the puckering of flesh

and little to tell except you won’t

believe
how that river winds and when you

don’t see the feet you concentrate on the feet.

And all the next day trying to think

what we didn’t talk about.

Where was the criminal conversation

broken sentences lost in the splash in wind.

Stan, my crazy summer friend,

why are we both going crazy?

Going down to Bellrock

recognizing home by the colour of barns

which tell us north, south, west,

and otherwise lost in miles and miles of rain

in the middle of this century

following the easy fucking stupid plot to town.

Bonjour.      This is pig glass

a piece of cloudy sea

nosed out of the earth by swine

and smoothed into pebble

run it across your cheek

it will not cut you

and this is my hand a language

which was buried for years     touch it

against your stomach

                         The pig glass

I thought

was the buried eye of Portland Township

slow faded history

waiting to be grunted up

There is no past until you breathe

on such green glass

               rub it

over your stomach and cheek

The Meeks family used this section

years ago to bury tin

crockery forks dog tags

and each morning

pigs ease up that ocean

redeeming it again

into the possibilities of rust

one morning I found a whole axle

another day a hand crank

but this is pig glass

tested with narrow teeth

and let lie. The morning’s green present.

Portland Township jewellery.

There is the band from the ankle of a pigeon

a weathered bill from the Bellrock Cheese Factory

letters in 1925 to a dead mother I

disturbed in the room above the tractor shed.

Journals of family love

servitude to farm weather

a work glove in a cardboard box

creased flat and hard like a flower.

A bottle thrown

by loggers out of a wagon

past midnight

explodes against rock.

This green fragment has behind it

the
booomm
when glass

tears free of its smoothness

now once more smooth as knuckle

a tooth on my tongue.

Comfort that bites through skin

hides in the dark afternoon of my pocket.

Snake shade.

Determined histories of glass.

It is the hour we move small

in the last possibilities of light

now the sky opens its blue vault

I thought this hour belonged to my children

bringing cows home

bored by duty swinging a stick,

but this focus of dusk out of dust

is everywhere – here by the Nile

the boats wheeling

like massive half-drowned birds

and I gaze at water that dreams

dust off my tongue,

in this country your mouth

feels the way your shoes look

Everything is reducing itself to shape

Lack of light cools your shirt

men step from barbershops

their skin alive to the air.

All day

dust covered granite hills

and now

suddenly the Nile is flesh

an arm on a bed

In Indian miniatures

I cannot quite remember

what this hour means

– people were small,

animals represented

simply by dust

they stamped into the air.

All I recall of commentaries

are abrupt lovely sentences where

the colour of a bowl

a left foot stepping on a lotus

symbolized separation.

Or stories of gods

creating such beautiful women

they themselves burned in passion

and were reduced to ash.

Women confided to pet parrots

solitary men dreamed into the conch.

So many

graciously humiliated

by the distance of rivers

The boat turns languid

under the hunched passenger

sails

ready for the moon

fill like a lung

there is no longer

depth of perception

it is now possible

for the outline of two boats

to collide silently

7 a.m. The hour of red daylight

I walk through palace grounds

waking the sentries

                         scarves

around their neck and mouths

leak breath mist

The gibbons stroll

twenty feet high

through turret arches

and on the edge

of brown parapet

I am alone

               leaning

               into flying air

Ancient howls of a king

who released his aviary

like a wave to the city below

celebrating the day of his birth

and they when fed

would return to his hand

like the payment of grain

All over Rajasthan

palaces die young

                         at this height

                         a red wind

my shirt and sweater cold

From the white city below

a beautiful wail

of a woman’s voice rises

300 street transistors

simultaneously playing

the one radio station of Udaipur

Uswetakeiyawa. The night mile

through the village of tall

thorn leaf fences

sudden odours

which pour through windows of the jeep.

We see nothing, just

the grey silver of the Dutch canal

where bright coloured boats

lap like masks in the night

their alphabets lost in the dark.

No sight but the imagination’s

story behind each smell

or now and then a white sarong

pumping its legs on a bicycle

like a moth in the headlights

               and the dogs

who lean out of night

strolling the road

with eyes of sapphire

and hideous body

                         so mongrelled

they seem to have woken

to find themselves tricked

into outrageous transformations,

one with the spine of a snake

one with a creature in its mouth

(car lights rouse them

from the purity of darkness).

This is the dream journey

we travel most nights

returning from Colombo.

The road hugs the canal

the canal every mile

puts an arm into the sea.

In daylight women bathe

waist deep beside the road

utterly still as I drive past

their diya reddha cloth

tied under their arms.

Brief sentences of women

lean men with soapy buttocks

their arms stretching up

to pour water over themselves,

or the ancient man in spectacles

crossing the canal

only his head visible

pulling something we cannot see

in the water behind him.

The women surface

bodies the colour of shadow

wet bright cloth

the skin of a mermaid.

In the silence of the night drive

you hear ocean you swallow odours

which change each minute – dried fish

swamp toddy a variety of curries

and something we have never been able to recognize.

There is just this thick air

and the aura of dogs

in trickster skin.

Once in the night we saw

something slip into the canal.

There was then the odour we did not recognize.

The smell of a dog losing its shape.

Dusk in Colombo

the Bo tree dark all day

gathers the last of our light

and in its green rooms which yawn

over Pettah stores

is its own shadow

– hundreds of unseen bats

tuning up the auditorium

in archaic Tamil

Trincomalee

               they whisper

is my brother

source of my exile

long slow miles to the scrub north

whose blossoms are dirty birds

so bright they are extracts of the sea

Swim

               into the north’s blue eye

over the milk floor of ocean

that darkens only with depth

The Ray

flies in silence

muttering bubbles to himself

Tread over his

               avenue

The ancient warrior

whose brother

stole his operatic tongue

                         plunges

in pure muscle

towards his neighbours

bloodless full

of noon moonlight

only his twin

knows how to charm

the waters against him

                                                 
for Hetti Corea, 8 years old

‘
The Sinhalese are beyond a doubt one of the least musical people in the world. It would be quite impossible to have less sense of pitch, line or rhythm
’
PAUL BOWLES

Your voice sounds like a scorpion being pushed

through a glass tube

like someone has just trod on a peacock

like wind howling in a coconut

like a rusty bible, like someone pulling barbed wire

across a stone courtyard, like a pig drowning,

a vattacka being fried

a bone shaking hands

a frog singing at Carnegie Hall.

Like a crow swimming in milk,

like a nose being hit by a mango

like the crowd at the Royal-Thomian match,

a womb full of twins, a pariah dog

with a magpie in its mouth

like the midnight jet from Casablanca

like Air Pakistan curry,

a typewriter on fire, like a hundred

pappadans being crunched, like someone

trying to light matches in a dark room,

the clicking sound of a reef when you put your head into the sea,

a dolphin reciting epic poetry to a sleepy audience,

the sound of a fan when someone throws brinjals at it,

like pineapples being sliced in the Pettah market

like betel juice hitting a butterfly in mid-air

like a whole village running naked onto the street

and tearing their sarongs, like an angry family

pushing a jeep out of the mud, like dirt on the needle,

like 8 sharks being carried on the back of a bicycle

like 3 old ladies locked in the lavatory

like the sound I heard when having an afternoon sleep

and someone walked through my room in ankle bracelets.

All week since he’s been home

he has watched late movies alone

terrible one star films and then staggering

through the dark house to his bed

waking at noon to work on the broken car

he has come home to fix.

21 years old and restless

back from logging on Vancouver Island

with men who get rid of crabs with Raid

               
2 minutes bending over in agony

               
and then into the showers!

Last night I joined him for
The Prisoner of Zenda

a film I saw three times in my youth

and which no doubt influenced me morally.

Hot coffee bananas and cheese

we are ready at 11.30 for adventure.

At each commercial Sky

breaks into midnight guitar practice

head down playing loud and intensely

till the movie comes on and the music suddenly stops.

Skyler’s favourite hours when he’s usually alone

cooking huge meals of anything in the frying pan

thumbing through
Advanced Guitar
like a bible.

We talk during the film

and break into privacy during commercials

or get more coffee or push

the screen door open and urinate under the trees.

Laughing at the dilemmas of 1920 heroes

suggestive lines, cutaways to court officials

who raise their eyebrows at least 4 inches

when the lovers kiss …

only the anarchy of the evil Rupert of Hentzau

is appreciated.

               And still somehow

by 1.30 we are moved

as Stewart Granger girl-less and countryless

rides into the sunset with his morals and his horse.

The perfect world is over. Banana peels

orange peels ashtrays guitar books.

2 a.m. We stagger through

into the slow black rooms of the house.

I lie in bed fully awake. The darkness

breathes to the pace of a dog’s snoring.

The film is replayed to sounds

of an intricate blues guitar.

Skyler is Rupert then the hero.

He will leave in a couple of days

for Montreal or the Maritimes.

In the movies of my childhood the heroes

after skilled swordplay and moral victories

leave with absolutely nothing

to do for the rest of their lives.