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The Cinnamon Peeler

Page 9

by Michael Ondaatje


                           Wet moonlight

                           recalls childhood

  the long legged daughter

                 the stars

  of Wichita in the distance

  midnight and hugging

  against her small chest

  the favourite book,

  Goodnight Moon

  under the covers she

  reads its courtly order

  its list of farewells

  to everything

                           We grow less complex

  We reduce ourselves The way lovers

  have their small cheap charms

  silver lizard,

  a stone

  Ancient customs

  that grow from dust

                           swirled out

  from prairie into tropic

  Strange how the odours meet

  How, however briefly, bedraggled

  history

                 focuses

  Skin Boat

  ‘A sheet of water near your breasts

  where I can sink

  like a stone’

  PAUL ELUARD

  HER HOUSE

  Because she has lived alone, her house is the product of nothing but herself and necessity. The necessity of growing older and raising children. Others drifted into her life, in and out and they have changed her, added things, but I have never been into a home that is a revelation of character and time as much as hers. It contains those she knows and has known and she has distilled all of her journey. When I first met her I saw nothing but her, and now, as she becomes familiar, I recognize the small customs.

  The problem for her is leaving. She says, ‘Last night I was listening to everything I know so well, and I imagined what if I woke up in a year’s time and there were different trees.’ Streets, the weight of sea air, certain birds who recognize your shrubbery, that too holds you, allows a freedom of habit, is a house.

  Everything here is alien to me but you. And your room like a grey well, your coat hangers above the laundry machine where you hang the semi-damp clothes so you do not have to iron them, the green grey walls of wood, the secret drawer which you opened after you knew me two years to show me the ancient Japanese pens. All this I love. Though I carry my own landscape in me and my three bags. But this has become your skin, and as you leave you recognize this.

  On certain evenings, when I have not bothered to put on lights, I hit my knees on low bookcases where they should not be. But you shift your hip easily, habitually, around them as you pass by carrying laundry or books. When you can move through a house blindfolded it belongs to you. You are moving like blood calmly within your own body. It is only recently that I am able to wake beside you and without looking, almost in a dream, put out my hand and know exactly where your shoulder or your heart will be – you in your specific posture in this bed of yours that we share. And at times this has seemed to be knowledge. As if you were a blueprint of your house.

  THE CINNAMON PEELER

  If I were a cinnamon peeler

  I would ride your bed

  and leave the yellow bark dust

  on your pillow.

  Your breasts and shoulders would reek

  you could never walk through markets

  without the profession of my fingers

  floating over you. The blind would

  stumble certain of whom they approached

  though you might bathe

  under rain gutters, monsoon.

  Here on the upper thigh

  at this smooth pasture

  neighbour to your hair

  or the crease

  that cuts your back. This ankle.

  You will be known among strangers

  as the cinnamon peeler’s wife.

  I could hardly glance at you

  before marriage

  never touch you

  – your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.

  I buried my hands

  in saffron, disguised them

  over smoking tar,

  helped the honey gatherers …

  When we swam once

  I touched you in water

  and our bodies remained free,

  you could hold me and be blind of smell.

  You climbed the bank and said

                 this is how you touch other women

  the grass cutter’s wife, the lime burner’s daughter.

  And you searched your arms

  for the missing perfume

                           and knew

                 what good is it

  to be the lime burner’s daughter

  left with no trace

  as if not spoken to in the act of love

  as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.

  You touched

  your belly to my hands

  in the dry air and said

  I am the cinnamon

  peeler’s wife. Smell me.

  WOMEN LIKE YOU

  the communal poem – Sigiri Graffiti, 5th century

  They do not stir

  these ladies of the mountain

  do not give us

  the twitch of eyelids

                           The king is dead

  They answer no one

  take the hard

  rock as lover.

  Women like you

  make men pour out their hearts

                           ‘Seeing you I want

                           no other life’

                           ‘The golden skins have

                           caught my mind’

  who came here

  out of the bleached land

  climbed this fortress

  to adore the rock

  and with the solitude of the air

  behind them

                 carved an alphabet

  whose motive was perfect desire

  wanting these portraits of women

  to speak

  and caress

  Hundreds of small verses

  by different hands

  became one

  habit of the unrequited

  Seeing you

  I want no other life

  and turn around

  to the sky

  and everywhere below

  jungle, waves of heat

  secular love

  Holding the new flowers

  a circle of

  first finger and thumb

  which is a window

  to your breast

  pleasure of the skin

  earring earring

  curl

  of the belly

                 and then

  stone mermaid

  stone heart

  dry as a flower

  on rock

  you long eyed women

  the golden

  drunk swan breasts

  lips

  the long long eyes

  we stand against the sky

  I bring you

  a flute

  from the throat

  of a loon

  so talk to me

  of the used heart

  THE RIVER NEIGHBOUR

  All these rumours. You lodge in the mountains

  of Hang-chou, a cabin in Portland townsh
ip,

  or in Yüeh-chou for sure

  the dust from my marriage

  wasted our clear autumn

  This month the cactus

  under the rains

  while you lounge with my children

  by the creek snakes, the field asparagus

  Across the universe

  each room I lit

  was a dark garden, I held

  nothing but the lamp

  this letter paints me

  transparent as I am

  One dead bird in the hall

  conversation of the water-closets

  company of the leaf on the stairs

  I pass her often

  Moon leaf memory of asparagus

  I find her earrings

  at the foot of curtainless windows

  In the kitchen

  salt fills the body

  of an RCA Victor dog

  Let us nose our way

  next year with the spring waters

  and search for each other

  somewhere in the east

  TO A SAD DAUGHTER

  All night long the hockey pictures

  gaze down at you

  sleeping in your tracksuit.

  Belligerent goalies are your ideal.

  Threats of being traded

  cuts and wounds

  – all this pleases you.

  O my god! you say at breakfast

  reading the sports page over the Alpen

  as another player breaks his ankle

  or assaults the coach.

  When I thought of daughters

  I wasn’t expecting this

  but I like this more.

  I like all your faults

  even your purple moods

  when you retreat from everyone

  to sit in bed under a quilt.

  And when I say ‘like’

  I mean of course ‘love’

  but that embarrasses you.

  You who feel superior to black and white movies

  (coaxed for hours to see Casablanca)

  though you were moved

  by Creature from the Black Lagoon.

  One day I’ll come swimming

  beside your ship or someone will

  and if you hear the siren

  listen to it. For if you close your ears

  only nothing happens. You will never change.

  I don’t care if you risk

  your life to angry goalies

  creatures with webbed feet.

  You can enter their caves and castles

  their glass laboratories. Just

  don’t be fooled by anyone but yourself.

  This is the first lecture I’ve given you.

  You’re ‘sweet sixteen’ you said.

  I’d rather be your closest friend

  than your father. I’m not good at advice

  you know that, but ride

  the ceremonies

  until they grow dark.

  Sometimes you are so busy

  discovering your friends

  I ache with a loss

  – but that is greed.

  And sometimes I’ve gone

  into my purple world

  and lost you.

  One afternoon I stepped

  into your room. You were sitting

  at the desk where I now write this.

  Forsythia outside the window

  and sun spilled over you

  like a thick yellow miracle

  as if another planet

  was coaxing you out of the house

  – all those possible worlds! –

  and you, meanwhile, busy with mathematics.

  I cannot look at forsythia now

  without loss, or joy for you.

  You step delicately

  into the wild world

  and your real prize will be

  the frantic search.

  Want everything. If you break

  break going out not in.

  How you live your life I don’t care

  but I’ll sell my arms for you,

  hold your secrets for ever.

  If I speak of death

  which you fear now, greatly,

  it is without answers,

  except that each

  one we know is

  in our blood.

  Don’t recall graves.

  Memory is permanent.

  Remember the afternoon’s

  yellow suburban annunciation.

  Your goalie

  in his frightening mask

  dreams perhaps

  of gentleness.

  ALL ALONG THE MAZINAW

  Later the osprey

  falling towards

  only what he sees

  the messenger heron

  warning of our progress

  up Mud Lake

  a paddle is

  stranger

  to what it heaves out of the way

  Wherever you go

  within a silence

  is witnessed,

                           touches.

  Everything aware

  of alteration but you.

  Creatures who veer. The torn leaf

  descending into marsh gas

  into an ancient breath.

  In bony rapids

  rock gazed up

  with the bright paint

  of previous canoes.

  But now, you, c’est là,

  with the clear river water heart

  the rock who floats

  on her own deep reflection.

  Female rock. Limb. Holes of hunger

  we climb into and disappear.

  One hour in the arms of the Mazinaw.

  Those things we don’t know we love

  we love harder.

                           Tanned face

  stern rock the rock lolling

  memorized by the Algonquin

  Mohawk lovers. Mineral eye.

  O yes I saw your dear sisters too

  before this afternoon’s passion

  those depot creek nights when they

  unpacked their breasts

  serious and full of the fever of loon

  for whoever stumbled

  young onto the august

  country waters.

  PACIFIC LETTER

  to Stan of Depot Creek, old friend, pal o’mine

  Now I remember that you rebuilt my chicken coop

  north of the farmhouse along the pasture fence

  with fresh pine from Verona.

  In autumn you hid a secret message under floorboards

  knowing we would find it in spring.

  A fanciful message. Carved with care.

  As you carved you imagined the laughing.

  We both know the pleasures art and making bring.

  And in summer we lounged for month on month

  letting slide the publishers and English Departments

  who sent concerned letters that slept in the red mailbox.

  Men and women came drifting in

  from the sea and from the west border

  and with them there was nothing at cross purpose.

  They made nothing of mountain crossing

  to share that fellowship.

  The girls danced because

  their long sleeves would not keep still

  and I, drunk, went to sleep among field rocks.

  We spoke out desires without regret.

  Then you returned to the west of the province

  and I to the south.

  After separation had come to its worst

  we met and travelled the Mazinaw with my sons

  through all the thirty-six folds of that creature river

  into the valley of bright lichen,

  green rice beds, marble rock, and at night

  slept under croaking pine.

  The spirit so high
it was all over the heavens!

  And at Depot Creek we walked

  for a last time down river

  to a neighbour’s southern boundary

  past the tent where you composed verses

  past the land where I once lived

  the water about it clear in my memory as blue jade.

  Then you and your wife sang back and forth

  in the mosquito filled cabin under the naphtha.

  The muskrat, listening at the edge,

  heard our sound – guitars and lone violin

  whose weavings seduced us with a sadness.

  The canoe brushed over open lake

  hearing the lighted homes

  whose laughter eliminated the paddle

  and the loon stumbled

  up sudden into the air beside the boat

  shocked us awake and disappeared

  leaving a ripple that slid the moon away.

  And before the last days in August

  we scattered like stars and rain.

  And I think now that this

  is what we are to each other,

  friends busy with their own distance

  who reappear now and then alongside.

  As once you could not believe

  I had visited the town of your youth

  where you sat in your room

  perfecting Heartbreak Hotel

  that new place to ‘dwell’ – that

  gentle word in the midst of angry song.

  All this comes to an end.

  During summer evenings

  I miss your company.

  Things we clung to

  stay on the horizon

  and we become the loon

  on his journey

  a lone tropical taxi

  to confused depth and privacy.

  At such times – no talking

  no conclusion in the heart.

 

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