for doors that allowed privacy.

                           A rain

  swollen copy of Jack London

  a magazine drawing of a rabbit

  bordered with finishing nails.

  6 chickens, bird cage (empty),

  sauerkraut cutting board

  down to the rock

                 trees

  not bothering to look

  into the old woman’s eyes

  as we go in, get a number

  have the power to bid

  on everything that is exposed.

  After an hour in this sun

  I expected her to unscrew

  her left arm and donate it

  to the auctioneer’s excitement.

  In certain rituals we desire

  only what we cannot have.

  While for her, Mrs Germain,

  this is the needle’s eye

  where maniacs of earth select.

  Look, I wanted to say,

  $10 for the dog

  with faded denim eyes

  FARRE OFF

  There are the poems of Campion I never saw till now

  and Wyatt who loved with the best

  and suddenly I want 16th-century women

  round me devious politic aware

  of step ladders to the king

  Tonight I am alone with dogs and lightning

  aroused by Wyatt’s talk of women who step

  naked into his bedchamber

  Moonlight and barnlight constant

  lightning every second minute

  I have on my thin blue parka

  and walk behind the asses of the dogs

  who slide under the gate

  and sense cattle

  deep in the fields

  I look out into the dark pasture

  past where even the moonlight stops

  my eyes are against the ink of Campion

  WALKING TO BELLROCK

  Two figures in deep water.

  Their frames truncated at the stomach

  glide along the surface. Depot Creek.

  One hundred years ago lumber being driven down this river

  tore and shovelled and widened the banks into Bellrock

  down past bridges to the mill.

  The two figures are walking

  as if half sunk in a grey road

  their feet tentative, stumbling on stone bottom.

  Landscapes underwater. What do the feet miss?

  Turtle, watersnake, clam. What do the feet ignore

  and the brain not look at, as two figures slide

  past George Grant’s green immaculate fields

  past the splashed blood of cardinal flower on the bank.

  Rivers are a place for philosophy but all thought

  is about the mechanics of this river is about

  stones that twist your ankles

  the hidden rocks you walk your knee into—

  feet in slow motion and brain and balanced arms

  imagining the blind path of foot, underwater sun

  suddenly catching the almond coloured legs

  the torn old Adidas tennis shoes we wear

  to walk the river into Bellrock.

  What is the conversation about for three hours

  on this winding twisted evasive river to town?

  What was the conversation about all summer.

  Stan and I laughing joking going summer crazy

  as we lived against each other.

  To keep warm we submerge. Sometimes

  just our heads decapitated

  glide on the dark glass.

  There is no metaphor here.

  We are aware of the heat of the water, coldness of the rain,

  smell of mud in certain sections that farts

  when you step on it, mud never walked on

  so you can’t breathe, my god you can’t breathe this air

  and you swim fast your feet off the silt of history

  that was there when the logs went

  leaping down for the Rathburn Timber Company

  when those who stole logs had to leap

  right out of the country if caught.

  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.

  PIG GLASS

  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.

  THE HOUR OF COWDUST

  It is the hour we move small

  in the last possibilities of light

  now the s
ky 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

  THE PALACE

  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

  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.

  THE WARS

  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

  SWEET LIKE A CROW

                                                   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 impossi
ble 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.

  LATE MOVIES WITH SKYLER

  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