A Shadow in Yucatan (5 page)

Hawk. High
strider.
For whom do you churn buttermilk, who drinks your cloudless
cream?
What power tilts your balance of wing?
Would you give no thanks for my shoulder of rest?

I’d give my right hand
for your eye, for your nest,
for your claw of calamity, a beak-full of blood,
to spring without falter, to dip without guilt...
Hawk, sky serpent, will you teach me intent?

Salmon salut. What
penetrates your impervious skin,
your scales of incision, your pivoting fin?
Fish, can you listen while you swallow the tide
convert the sea’s order, placate its demon?

Stay steady and
answer, while you sieve through a gill
as fine as a feather, the Omnipotent Will.
What gave you the courage to defy, single handed, the Flood and
Creation?
Salmon leap up and teach me to swim.

Fawn, frost-bitten,
born before spring;
unprepared for extinction, without scale or wing.
From the muzzle of your mother, you steam your rough faith that
springs a quick skip to the grass’s bent swath..
Show me the marrow of innocence.

In the vortex of the
waters we shall need the salmon’s skill;
in pounding confusion, the hawk’s high pennant quill...

Child, when you set me
from your shoulder
will you teach me how to live?

The Landlady

Miriam Martins
is eating bagels off the blue chequered cloth that gives a
laundered look to the wilting morning.
It is ten only; already the trees flag and hang out their
tongues...

I should sit all day
with a fly whisk under a banana leaf, is it so hot!
Like a native of the South Seas, all beads and belly comfortable,
with the sweat running into a rag.
Why do we whites make such trouble for ourselves?

The day yawns
its intention to sleep.

The gate-latch
chirps like an irritated cricket.

Who is this, abroad
before the morning is decent, before it has taken out the
curl-papers and pared its nails?
Is that the tenant, so help me?
The girl who left a letter of no meaning wrapped around the
rent?
And I believing she was dependable...
Footsore...you can’t fool me, stepping careful of blisters...

Arthritic
fingers fill the kettle.
The unswerving eye escapes the sockets of prejudice, and annotates
with sympathy

The younger generation
have we betrayed, solitude too much, too soon
The answers we had, but did we first ask the questions?

‘
And nu? To pull the
sheet over your head I’m sure, but first coffee, and you eat a
little something...’

‘
Mrs. Martins I’m
sorry…’

‘
Sorry you should
be, but later. Come. Come inside and sit down...if that cat should
be so kind...a stool for the feet...the dirt never mind...some
things are easy...’

Stephanie sinks
into new observance, unclouded by timidity, or the over-ready
answer.
An old woman dwells in dreams, and pokes the coals of neglected
opportunity, without guile or expectation.
Her heart too huge to handle, threatens to boil.
She covers it with chatter.

‘
The grocer now is
selling up...with the extra penny every time, should I be
surprised?
Oi veh, but the coffee was, for celebration, a quarter off...but
still fresh, you will taste.’

She strains,
pours and slides it across, sets bagels on a plate, aslant with
knife and napkin...

‘
So eat’

The
interrogation lies folded in elbows and the minute pursuit of
crumb.
It can wait.
Solicitude must first be fed, and is replete with the wiping of the
mouth.

‘
Better
huh?’

'Much. Thank you.’

‘
For thanks you can
tell me where you’ve been?’

‘
I went to New
York’

‘
To see your mama?
Why didn’t you say?’

‘
I didn’t go
home.’

‘
That is serious, to
New York and not home? Miriam you are no fool, for a week something
wrong.
For what good reason is a person going quietly to New
York?’

‘
I went for an
abortion.’

Apprehension
finds no nest in this hospice of candour, where slanting sun
embraces womanhood

‘
Now she tells me!
Afterwards she tells me! Alone, living in my house, she gets an
abortion without telling me!’

‘
I didn’t go through
with it.’

‘
So, with my own
ears I must have surprises! A pregnant woman sits and eats bagels
and feels perhaps, a little sick. She drinks coffee with a
refrigerator full of milk...She says nothing...Still she says
nothing. Blood from stones, would you believe. So what are we going
to do?’

The morning has
moved apace to deliver premature.
Reminiscence trembles in the afterbirth of day, and prophecy
foreshadows dark.
There is instantly all and endless time for the old woman, the
young, and the obliging idiot clock.

Speech must now
grow from silence, and the stones that cockle the black backs of
women in prehistory, left alone with the consequence of men.

There will
always be light on the sea;
rocks to serve for washboards, and make wrecks.
Children to hide and seek through lives...
Women remain, to spin the flax of deep unquestioning.

‘What are we
going to do’ was never a question, but the birth of a
design...
To fashion a key pattern, blood must serve for dye.

Two women bask
in silence,
absorb the anguish sun.
The cradle of compassion lies in an open palm.

My world is swaddled
in bandages, wheeled in a crescent dark boat.
It splints its feet in knitted boots, its fingers shackled in
lace.
Its candid eyes are pin-tucked skies...
but patchwork scars its face.

Oh for a lifting lung
and the slip-stream escape from the wave!
I would be anything but human.
Have we wriggled so far to be snared in warm blood featherless, to
assume dominion over those that are free?

Free to succumb in
unthinking endeavour
A nest too slap-happy for wind,
an unduly severe winter...
a dearth of flying food.

Foresight and
intelligence!
Why not beak or claw?
The well polished horns of conflict
impale all skidding hope.

I can choose what has
been chosen, confine a bright bold life in a barred cell of
circumstance, fed on a selfish breast of fierce and dogged
watchfulness.
A twisted spoon of anguish, to feed skimmed, or curdled milk.

My love I will set you
afloat in a basket of weed
Commit you in prayer to the eddying sea...

My life will be brined
in well bruised salt
It will numb the fluent tongue.
The songs it sings will be fractured strings.
Its colour sponges of grey.

But the moon will
slice six blades of blood
first, my darling one.

Coral Gables denies its origins with
emphatic upraised palms.
Too many flags oblige in its ascent, pay homage to its marshalled
loyalty...
(The State of the Nation here is manifest.)

The ancestry of
mangrove mud is overlaid with lawn.
The dugong, menaced by machine, is long deceased.
No gentle jaws plough the navigable channels free...

Where
ocean-going fishing boats now snub the wharf, the sinewed swarthy
boy once clothed his hook...laid his baskets, set his snares, and
slept.

Here impeccable
shutters are the well turned cuffs on sleeves of houses, suites of
rooms, textures in two pleasing tones...
Wide sweeps of water, incised by steps, lead the harnessed eye.

No hedges
interrupt, or hold the small vulgarities of yours or ours...too
trimmed, or not enough...

‘This neighbourhood
b’longs t’all of us. Elected residents and income keep the nigras
out’.

Women here have
too much time to spend entirely.
Despite the rigours of perpetual war with heat, the car seat cover,
and the sweat that lies in ambush for the moment in unplanned
transit between the ‘Charity Luncheon’ and the ‘Lonely
Wives.’
Good works and social conscience frost the day that otherwise would
be all angel cake

*****

Adoption
volunteers are all discreet, as befits the empathy of those who
ligature the cord, from which the nerves run silver into smiles,
and thanks, and letters of content.

(The wound the
new child left remains unstitched. The bleeding staunched with
words of cold encouragement.)

Before the
blind and monitored transplant the vessel must be nurtured
carefully...
Tremulous questions answered with restraint...
the liquid of despair drawn to resolve in the chalice of a healthy
pregnancy.

*****

‘
A taxi we take. I
pay, and I come too...You call and fix it...I fix orange
juice’

Two women
extricate from the comfort of the turning wheel...

Deliberate....

Conceal
misgiving in elaborate concern.
(The Cuban cabbie rests his anchor arm athwart the brown split
back)
They recount coins, check purses, pull at sleeves...
(He tips his mirror, wipes his forehead, sets the meter, and sits
back)
The old one gives a tip with emphasis.
(He smiles and touches his baseball cap. Restarts the engine,
waits, and pulls away to join his colours to the odds-on
race)
The older takes the younger’s arm, and forces a slower pace.

*****

One was
expected.
Another chair is fetched, the tapping point of irritation laid
aside.
The sleek combed head shakes free its wasp of doubt, and smiles
upon the Negro coffee maid.

‘
This must be
your...? How very nice...How pleased I am to meet you...’

‘
She’s a
friend.’

‘
Might as well be
father for the way I feel...If I am speaking out of turn you put me
straight.’

‘
Her name is Mrs.
Martins’

‘
Miriam will do, and
sick at heart to watch this tragedy...lovely mother...lovely girl
come here to pledge her unborn child away. I come to say the things
she cannot say herself, no shame it is, and no embarrassment...For
love she comes to talk. Too old I am, to offer anything...If I had
youth, or money...Ah my Gott’

The old face
crumples like a burning shoe, and shakes as though to free itself
of scald.
The girl kneels to take the thorny hand; restore its life against
her wet soft cheek...

Two figures
captured in the sculptor’s eye,
weighted with grave linen-fold to drop the bowed old back on slim
arched neck...
finds unexpected stillness that shouts back.

Weeping assumes
a flawless cast, and every running tear an edifice.
Three women find themselves conjoined; by wholeness and the single
heart.
Nothing was evaded. Nothing planned. A well was struck. Three women
drank.

Nothing now
cannot be said. Little need be, either.