The Cinnamon Peeler

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The Cinnamon Peeler Page 8

by Michael Ondaatje


  Another deep night

  with the National Enquirer

  silence

  like the unseen

  arms of a bat

  the book

  falls open

  to sadness

  – dead flowers, dead

  horses who carried

  lovers to a meeting

  On my last walk

  through the kitchen

  I see it

                 I lift

  huge arms of a cobweb

  out of the air

  and carry its Y

  slowly to the porch

  as if alive

  as if it was a wounded bird

  or some terrible camouflaged insect

  that could damage children

           *

  The distance between us

  and then this small map

  of stars

                 a concentrated

  ocean of the night

  when lovers worship heavens

  they are worshipping

  a lack of distance

  my brother the moon

  the lofty mattress

  of nebula,

  rash and spray of love

                           It is all

  as close as my palm

  on your body

                                          so you

  among pillows and moonlight

  look up, search

  for the jewellery

  bathing in darkness

  satellite hunger, remote control,

  ‘the royal we’

                           and find

  your own dark hand

           *

  What were the names of the towns

  we drove into and through

                 stunned lost

  having drunk our way

  up vineyards

  and then Hot Springs

  boiling out the drunkenness

  What were the names

  I slept through

                 my head

  on your thigh

  hundreds of miles

  of blackness entering the car

                           All this

                           darkness and stars

  but now

  under the Napa Valley night

  a star arch of dashboard

  the ripe grape moon

  we are together

  and I love this muscle

  I love this muscle

  that tenses

                 and joins

  the accelerator

  to my cheek

  *

  (The linguistic war between men and women)

  And sometimes

  I think

  women in novels are too

  controlled by the adverb.

  As they depart

  a perfume of description

  ‘She rose from the table

  and left her shoe

  behind, casually’

  ‘Let’s keep our minds

  clear, she said drunkenly,’

  the print hardly dry

  on words like that

  My problem tonight

  is this landscape.

  Like the Sanskrit lover

  who sees breasts in the high clouds,

  testicles on the riverbed

  (‘The soldiers left their balls

  behind, crossing into Bangalore

  she said, mournfully’)

  Every leaf bends

  I can put my hand

  into various hollows, the dogs

  lick their way up the ditch

  swallow the scent

  of whatever they eat

  Always wanted to own

  a movie theatre

  called ‘The Moonlight’

  What’s playing at The Moonlight

  she asked

  leafily

  Men never trail away.

  They sweat adjective.

  ‘She fell into

  his unexpected arms.’

  He mixes a ‘devious’ drink.

  He spills his maddened seed

  onto the lettuce—

  *

  (Real life)

  In real life

  men talk about art

  women judge men

  In the Queen Street tavern

  3 p.m. the only one busy

  is the waitress

  who reads a book a day

  Hour of the afternoon soaps

  Accusations

  which hide the trap

  door of tomorrow’s guilt.

  Men bursting into bedrooms

  out of restaurants.

  Everyone talks on phones

  to the lover’s brother

  or the husband’s mistress

  My second beer

  my fifth cigarette

  the only thing more

  confusing venomous

  than real life

  is this hour of the soaps

  where nobody smokes

  and nobody talks about art

  I’ve woken in thick

  households

  all my life

  but can nightmare myself

  into this future—

  last spring I sat here

  Sunday Morning

  as bachelor drunks

  came in, eyes

  in prayer to the Billy Graham Show

  The pastel bar

  grey colours of the tv

  this is where people come

  after the second failure of redemption

  Ramon Fernandez,

                           tell me

  what port you

  bought that tattoo

           *

  Midnight dinner at the Vesta Lunch

  Here there is nothing

  I have taken from you

  so I begin with memory

  as old songs do

                           in this café

  against the night

  in this villa refrain

  where we collect the fragment

  no longer near us

  to make ourselves whole

                           your bright eyes

  in a greek bar, the way

  you wear your hat

           *

  I have always

  been afflicted

  by angular

  small breasted

  women

  from the mid-west,

  knew this was true

  the minute I met you

           *

  Repetition of midnight

  Every creature doth sleep

  But us

  and the fanatics

                 I want

  the roulette of the lightning bolt

  to decide all

  On this suburban street

  the skate-boarder rolls

  surrounded by the seeming

  hiss of electricity

                           unlit

  I see him through the trees

  up Ptarmigan

                 a thick sweater

  for the late September night

  I am unable to make anything of this

  who are
these words for

  Even the dog

  curls away

  into himself

  the only one to know your name

           *

  I write about you

  as if I own you

  which I do not.

  As you can say of nothing

  this is mine.

  When we rise

  the last hug

  no longer belongs,

  is your fiction

  or my story.

  Mulch for the future.

  Whether we pass

  through each other

  like pure arrows

  or fade into rumour

  I write down now

  a fiction of your arm

  or of that afternoon

  in Union Station

  when we both were lost

  pain falling free

  the speed of tears

  under the Grand Rotunda

  as we disappeared

  rose from each other

  you and your arrow

  taking just

  what you fled through

  *

  (‘I want to be lifted up by some great white bird unknown to the police…’)

  I will never let a chicken

  into my life

  but I have let you

  though you squeezed in

  through a screen door

  the way some chickens do

  I would never let chickens

  influence my character

  but like them good sense

  scatters at your entrance

  – ‘poetic skill,’ ‘duty,’

  under the fence

  Your lean shoulders

  studied with greyhounds.

  Such ball and socket joints

  I’ve seen only in diagrams

  on the cover of Scientific American.

  I’ve let greyhounds

  into my vicinity

  – noses, paws, ribcages

  against my arm, I admit

  a weakness

  for reluctant modesty.

  I could spend days lying on the ground

  seeing the world with the perspective of snails

  stumbling the small territory of obsessions

  this leaf and grain of you,

  could attempt the epic

  journey over your shoulder.

  When you were a hotel gypsy

  delirious by windows

  waving your arms

  and singing over the parking lots

  I learned from the foolish oyster

  and stepped out.

  So here I am

  saying see this

  look what I found

  when I opened myself up

  before death before the world,

  look at this blue eye

  this socket in her waving arm

  these wonders.

  In the night busy as snails

  in wet chlorophyll apartments

  we enter each other’s shells

  the way humans at such times

  wish to enter mouths of lovers,

  sleeping like the rumour of pearl

  in the embrace of oyster.

  I have never let spectacles into my life

  and now I am walking past

  where I could see.

  Here,

                 where the horizon was

  *

  (The desire under the Elms Motel)

  how I attempted seduction

  with a select and

  careful playing of

  The McGarrigle Sisters

  how you seduced me

  stereophonically      the laugh

  the nose     ankle     nature

                 repartee     the knee

  your sad determination     letters

  the earring

                 that falls

                 ‘hey love—

                 you forgot your glove’

           *

  Speaking to you

  this hour

  these days when

  I have lost the feather of poetry

  and the rains

  of separation

  surround us tock

  tock like Go tablets

  Everyone has learned

  to move carefully

  ‘Dancing’ ‘laughing’ ‘bad taste’

  is a memory

  a tableau behind trees of law

  In the midst of love for you

  my wife’s suffering

  anger in every direction

  and the children wise

  as tough shrubs

  but they are not tough

  – so I fear

  how anything can grow from this

  all the wise blood

  poured from little cuts

  down into the sink

  this hour it is not

  your body I want

  but your quiet company

           *

  Dentists disguise their own bad teeth

  barbers go bald, foolish birds

  travel to one particular tree.

  They pride themselves

  on focus.

  Poets cannot spell.

  Everyone claims abstinence.

  Reading Neruda to a class

  reading his lovely old

  curiosity about all things

  I am told this is the first time

  in months I seem happy.

  Jealous of his slide

  through complexity.

  All afternoon I keep

  stepping into his pocket

                 whispering

  instruct and delight me

  *

  (These back alleys)

  for Daphne

  In ’64 you moved

  and where was I?

  – somewhere and married.

  (In ’64 everybody got married)

  Whatever we are now we were then.

  Some days those maps collide

  falling into future land.

  It seems for hours

  we have sat in your car,

  almost valentine’s day,

  I’ve got a plane to meet and I

  hold your rose for you.

  This talking

  like a slow dance,

  the sharing of earphones.

  Since I got separated

  I cannot hold

  my brain in my arms anymore.

  Sitting in the back alley

  this new mapping, hello

  to the terra nova.

  Now we watch each other

  in our slow walks towards

  and out of everything

  we wanted to know in ’64

           *

  And for George moonlight

  became her. Curious. After years of wit

  he saw it enter her and believed,

  singing love songs in the back seat.

  Three of us drive downtown

  in our confusions

  goodbye to the hills of the 30’s

  Sinned, torn apart, how do each of us

  share our hearts

  and George still ‘hearty,’ bad jokes

  scattering to the group,

  does not converse, but he sings the heartbreakers

  badly and precisely in the back seat

  so we moon, we tough

           *

  Kissing the stomach

  kissing your scarred

  skin boat. History

  is what you’ve travelled on

  and take with you

  We’ve each had our stomachs

  kissed by strangers

  to the othe
r

  and as for me

  I bless everyone

  who kissed you here

  *

  (Ends of the Earth)

                 For you I have slept

  like an arrow in the hall

  pointing towards your wakefulness

  in other time zones

                 And wary

  piece by piece

  we put each other together

                           your past

  that of one who has walked

  through fifteen strange houses

  in order to be here

  the charm of Wichita

  gunmen in your bones

                 the 19th century

  strolling like a storm

  through your long body

  that history I read in comic books

  and on the flickering screen

  when I was thirteen

  Now we are cats-cradled

  in the Pacific

  how does one avoid this?

  Go to the ends of the earth?

  The loose moon follows

 

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