THE ANTHROPOLOGIST
She is perpetually damp, an unwrung-out sponge
sodden with forest perspiration,
the ragged, slack-jawed breaths
of thousands of tropical mammals, including
those bipeds over there. Are they human,
if humans truly sit on that special rung
just below the angels? No angel
would see the kinship between her and them.
The student and the studied. So what to do with
reams of fungalized note pages,
hundreds upon hundreds of letters linked to letters -
no better than the pictograms she cannot yet decipher,
the ones carelessly etched in ephemeral pigment
on the sweating cave walls?
She would burn those detailed notes
if any flame would have them. Smoke would be a welcome change
from years of never being dry in this God-forsaken jungle,
years of pinching six- and eight-legged hitchhikers
from her hair and skin, hearing the fat plop of leeches
as they release themselves to the ground, glutted
with her blood. Years of watching and learning and gaining
trust, while someone back home
in a cool, dry office translates her scribbles into books.
Her books have made her a hero.
The power of observation.
The strength of commitment.
The will to go on. She thinks of this and looks
into the eyes of the children - dark and clear like leaf pools,
deeper than anything she has ever written. She sees that
they now have words for radio and antibiotics, white woman, and
place where white woman comes from.
She sees now - as if they have taken notes on her - that one day
they will have to invent a word
for how she will leave them.
_____________
VIOLET GARTERS
Yes yes I said and he pulled them off ever so slowly the way I like I love to
show off my garters when my petticoats ride the caress of a summer breeze
I like the coolness under my skirts I like to be cool and hot hot and they like
it as well don't they now they like it quick but I would rather wait if I know
I will get what I want of course a pair of hands on my knees hands warm
with purpose on the long climb up
I am no spring flower but if they want a maid with her lap full of posies
then let them go for young ladies at garden parties I say mind you they
won't find girls with my afternoon habits full sun on a rumpled bed hush
for the neighbours and they won't have eager limbs with silk hose yes and
thigh garters yes the colour of a bruised mouth yes
-------------
STOMACHS
Think like a foot,
and the world is made of shoes
or broken glass.
Think like a stomach,
and the rocks
and wind-fallen branches
are the broken promises
of a plundered pantry.
The man on the radio
translates for his fellows.
"Last year, we argued
about music,
we read,
we ate well, and now
we are only stomachs."
The mind, with its hunger for those things
less nourishing than air
- but as vital - is long gone,
trampled by the jackboots of survival.
The tyrannical sack
of gastric juices
orders all organs into its army
- vanguard or reserves - all other impulses
shocked into obedience.
The mind is reduced
to a slate for the play of search images:
edible, potable, palatable, clean.
Even a table serves as a feast,
possessing the four thin legs
of a starving beast.
__________________
FEBRUARY 13, 1997
for Galway, Michael & Eric
Sometimes it is easy to bear
the cheery fascism of Pollyannas
and their bean-counting balance
of good and evil
- but only sometimes.
One day, I will need to summon
this warm, calm room
from the cabinet crammed with life's details
and relive this scene:
home-cooked feast arranged on old wood;
an aria from 'The Magic Flute' played with gracious intensity;
candle-flame flicker
on murmuring dinner companions.
Talk of tribalism and closed minds,
voiceless creatures and lost opportunities
has long dissolved into the distal regions of awareness.
Everything seems possible again.
Remember this night,
I tell myself,
when the gut yawns, straining for an answer,
when only discord clutters the air,
when there are no faces in the room
but mine.
_____________
WHAT A PECULIAR NARCISSISM
is practiced by cats
with their frequent, double-jointed tongue baths.
They know themselves
so well, by licks
and sniffing,
by a cleanliness so close to their god
(likely a salmon-bloated, blue-eyed Himalayan
with unmatted, immaculate fur)
that we humans should stand in awe.
Clumsy in our own murky self-examinations,
anosmic as we snoofle mental cavities
or spiritual chasms, we could do worse
than follow the cat's daily ablutions.
Funny how the hind legs merit the most care.
The paw pads require an occasional spit-and-chew.
And the neck and bib - parts nearest the face -
the least apt
to be groomed at all.
--from The Green Alembic, by Louise Fabiani, Signal Editions, 1999.
