Read Online The Cinnamon Peeler by Michael Ondaatje - Free Book Online Page B

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