The Cinnamon Peeler (13 page)

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.

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

All these rumours. You lodge in the mountains

of Hang-chou, a cabin in Portland township,

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

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.

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.

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.

I buy postage

                         seal this

and send it a thousand miles, thinking.

Sitting in an empty house

with a dog from the Mexican Circus!

O Daisy, embrace is my only pleasure.

Holding and hugging my friends. Education.

A wave of eucalyptus. Warm granite.

These are the things I have in my heart.

Heart and skills, there’s nothing else.

I usually don’t like small dogs but you

like midwestern women take over the air.

You leap into the air and pivot

a diver going up! You are known

to open the fridge and eat when you wish

you can roll down car windows and step out

you know when to get off the elevator.

I always wanted to be a dog

but I hesitated

for I thought they lacked certain skills.

Now I want to be a dog.