Delirious dreams. A raw and painful
sun aroused me. I do not mean
the sun itself was shining; the scene
to which my sore – but proud, disdainful –
body now awoke was shadow-less;
the sky in pure white doctor’s dress,
the sun a stethoscopic metal
on a ghastly patient pressed.
So has his heartbeat finally settled?
Is the air back in his chest?
And still those taunting words – raw
and pain and sun. And kelp. I saw
no kelp, yet seemed to feel it round me.
How strange such words should so confound me.

228.

Where were they coming from? I wrestled
free of that well-fettered spot
– for seeking warmth, my legs were caught
by several nets in which they’d nestled.
I staggered up and looked around.
Tug’s twisted crane, like sniffing hound
in stiffened point, had found the very
spot where once the albatross
had looked at me with dark and wary
eyes. And there ol’ Tug had tossed
her smokestack pipe, which looked just like
a great harpooner’s skillful strike.
(What jokester muse to blame, that whaling
spawns the double-rhyme – impaling?)

229.

And there – untouched, untroubled – my planted
flag, all droop and drag, still stood
amongst the scraps of splintered wood
and strewn debris of disenchanted
dunnage. A truant, upturned drawer
of knives. And scattered on the shore
some tanks of water. A book (which heartened,
for it had landed someplace dry):
Melville’s Typee. A Charlie’s carton¹⁰⁸
of juice (a mate of mine, that guy),
remarkably full, yet slightly scrunched
as if it had been stomach-punched.
Some happy news: my one-way shipment
had safely delivered my camp equipment.

Herman Melville: 'A book (which heartened, / for it had landed someplace dry): / Melville’s Typee

A tent. A bed. Some cargo had drifted
out to sea while I was lost
in throbbing dreams. A minor cost.
I couldn’t help feel but I’d been gifted
my life! This land! I scooped some sand
and kissed it! O all the dreams I’d planned,
my country! Our fate would be debated
in parliament – or parlia-tent
I should say – on my inflated
mattress, with me, just me, to represent
myself, a population of one.
To hold an election (and know I’d won!).
To write, to pass, to sign a treaty
sent by bottle to Tahiti;

231.

to draft new laws each year but never
let them pass, then on a whim
to check an imbalance, or take a swim
– or take a shit! And so forever
to break from Samuel Johnson’s rule
(that Republics are governed by more than one fool)¹⁰⁹
A single fool I’d be with numerous
voices in my head. This struck
me as so credible, so humorous,
a wave of laughter felled me. What luck,
to go insane before my camp
was made, amongst these tattered, damp,
remains of my absurd intentions!
The mind must check its own inventions.

232.

But just as I was pacifying
these befuddling thoughts, I heard
those words again. What fish or bird
or god was speaking? I tried replying:
‘Raw!’ I shouted. ‘How raw my pain!
Where is the sun?’ – and in this vein
I tried conversing with that crazy
agent in my head, but soon
survival’s sunbeam cleared my hazy
thoughts. The rainy afternoon
detained me long beneath a torn
and trembling tarp. And when the storm
had passed, that eerie voice was silent.

‘Concussions make our thoughts turn violent.’

233.

That’s what I thought, my dear! Some knocking
of my head it must have been!
Some damage to the wit within
had made me hear some spirits talking
(while giving them such little speech;
no more than fi ve or six words each).
It wasn’t until the following morning,
when truly the sun appeared – a pink
electrifying sort of warning
bulb, for how it flashed and blinked
as it prepared for its ascent –
that I began to think, would I invent
such words? And not until that strobing
sun matured, and I was probing

234.

To land! To land was all that mattered!

‘You see her, Tug? That brief expanse
of bronzy rock that seems to dance
upon the sea?’

                                Tug’s engine clattered
wistfully as we both spied
ahead; and watched my island ride
the waves – a small, enchanted saddle
strapped to bucking Neptune’s back;
and me, rough-rider, keen to straddle
her and break her in. Attack!
Attack! Tug’s engine revved, then roared;
and sent a shudder through the boards
beneath my feet; as I stood quaking
there, and felt her throttle shaking

219.

within my grip, a nervous partner,
a rapid step, an empty floor,
a final dervish dance before
carnassial rocks would rip apart her
flesh and mine. But straight we sped,
my island pitching less, more spread
across as we grew nearer.
I tell you, reader, we never see
life’s true dimensions clearer
– a sudden sense of symmetry;
an end to mirror the start – as when
our minds, at last, can comprehend
the time and place of our conclusion.
The vividness of life’s illusion!

220.

The sudden poignancy of every
moment, the way each tiny part’s
a perfect fit, just as great art
appears extempore, a random reverie,
when, in truth, it’s neatly planned;
and O, to glimpse the artist’s hand,
its careful, loving intervention
is the essence that defines
a genius! (And not that foul contention
made by preachers who opine
the hand’s divine, and much too strong
to be critiqued, or proven wrong.)
We do not mourn our death. The grieving
which occurs when we, perceiving

221.

all at once the sharp, meticulous
details of life, and how they all,
those trillion puzzle pieces, fall
in place the moment our ridiculous
end is reached – that grieving’s meant
not for ourselves. No. We lament
the waste of so much concentration
by our honest maker. We mourn
this artist’s sense of desolation;
the pain through which our world is born
and raised. The mighty precision! It’s clear,
so clear to one near death: the sheer
artistic effort! The more enchanted
is life, the more we take it for granted.

222.

The wind tried hard to hold me back; it
madly wiped my tears and filled
my ears with caution – ‘You’ll be killed!’ –
and made a mainsail of my jacket,
which spasmed, crackled, slapped my face
with its loose collar. That airy embrace
was steady, strong, but lacked the muscular
pluck of swarthy Tug, who rammed
me through each wave in that crepuscular
spread of sparkling violet jam.
How thick a sea can seem to one
whose journey – whose life – is almost done;
how far each wave, how long each second,
when one’s demise is finally reckoned!

Japanese 'Kate' drops a torpedo on the USS Carrier Hornet in the battle of Guadalcanal.

And as my Tug reached full velocity;
then my isle began to charge,
a monster baring blackish, large
and drool-smeared teeth, with a ferocity
never had I fathomed of
that fledgling land for which such love
I held. The island rushed right at us.
I heard what sounded like a case
of stomach gas, a rumble of flatus
rippling through Tug’s belly. I braced
against the portside rail with hands
that didn’t let go when we struck land.
And what a blow! As if the ocean
could not bear our ship’s commotion

224.

and wished to smash us into pieces
just to stop our god-awful drone.
Imagine water turned to stone,
or newborn lamb whose fleece is
suddenly changed to armor plate
– that’s how it was. Our hurling weight
from softest substance smacked that lithic,
steadfast island with a boom
unheard across the South Pacific
since Japan’s torpedoes doomed
the Hornet and the Enterprise¹⁰⁷
near islands named to honor a wise
Hebraic King! Atolls a-tolling!
Great moments in history are rarely consoling.

225.

What followed: A marvelous, crepitating
crunch; and then a cannonade
of sundry ware like grapeshot sprayed
into a foe – the navigating
gear, the kitchenette, a fridge,
straight through the window of the bridge;
the cabin detonated, spreaders
hurled ahead like monstrous spears,
a flurry of steel, as through a shredder,
wailed and whistled past my ears;
the radar vaulted from the ship
which left its steely chains to whip
about in wild, tentacular furry.
The rest, for me, is somewhat blurry.

226.

Until I found myself, still gripping
the rail, still prostrate on the deck,
still part of that spectacular wreck,
with bitter tasting liquid dripping
on my cheek (a mix of sea
and diesel fuel). Not far from me:
a large, much-dented brown container
which, a moment before, had lain
in Tug. The keel had split in twain her
hold, and there she rested, slain,
a disemboweled fish, or whale,
with box-shaped organs, steel entrails
all scattered around. The rocks were bleeding
her fuel. My mind, in sleep, receding. . .

The mist had passed. Now I was waking
to my Avalon, aware
I’d left behind my worldly cares
to win this heavenly realm. No taking
of life or breaking of hearts could here
occur; so what had I to fear?

The past was mist. Now I was turning
round my faithful Tug. She sighed
and moaned, she did (as if discerning
my intent), while I began to guide
her back into the misty glare
where waves in tinseled eveningwear
awaited dusk’s bewitching hour . . .
reminding me . . . My wife! How sour

213.

she’ll be! I pictured black stilettos
stepping from her matching black
convertible Beamer.¹⁰⁶ She’s early back
from work. The pair of plump palmettos
salute her in the dying rays
of salmon-color light which seem to paint,
by chance, a more authentic layer
upon that pseudo-mission house.
And as – a virtuoso player! –
she chins her diary, my spouse
sifts through her Gucci purse, all rush
and flush and sun-emblazoned blush.
The giant mission bell observes her.
It seems to know what will unnerve her.

214.

For after all that house-key sifting
– a small, askew, white envelope
resides on parquet floor:

                                                  I hope,
my dear, you’ll find these words reviving
if, perchance, your heels have slipped
on this – this note – and you have flipped
and knocked your head, or ripped a nylon
– or worse, that Prada denim skirt
you bought in Paris. I see no smile on
your face. Come on. It’s joy, not hurt,
I wish to offer now: You’re free!
Yes, free! That oath you gave to me
I cancel; and grant you, with this letter,
rights to men who suit you better!

215.

‘He always does this when I need – ’ O
how upset she’d be without
her handbag spouse to tote about!
My cummerbund, my white tuxedo,
they’d have to fit another mate
– and soon! – or else she’d activate
those deeply diagnostic articles
found in all the Women’s press,
the ones which scan your every particle
for tell-tale signs of grief or stress.
To go alone? She might as well
not shave her underarms and smell
of fish! This thought would deeply vex her.
Her phone is voice-dialed: ‘Dexter! Dexter!’

216.

But let us leave her to her scheming,
my gentle reader. This sudden flash
of marital thoughts came from my rash
(but firm) and contradictory-seeming
retreat. I’d turned back home, back west,
as if relinquishing my quest
to claim that resolute and armor-
plated isle. Okay, if she’s
afraid, poor island, I shall not harm her . . .
But then – with frothy surge of sea
I spun the wheel round! I’d say
we were about a mile away
when once again her rocks were glimmering
– like foam upon a milk-pot simmering –

217.

straight before our eyes. A minute’s
rest I granted faithful Tug,
then squeezed her wheel, a farewell hug.
The Eastern sky now held within it
fragments of a moon whose case
had cracked and now it leaked through space
a stream of pale magenta vapors.
It felt unreal. A sailor in a dream!
My boat made out of folded paper!
Goodbye dear Tug! So frail she seemed.
It pained to think of her demise,
but it was easy to surmise
I’d die as well – and thus, undaunted,
I chose for two the fate one wanted.

I finished packing the last container,
a misty, sterile, mid-afternoon
in ’96, the first of June,
and climbed aboard an old Purse-Seiner¹⁰³
I’d bought with cash six weeks before
and boldly christened: The Tug of War.
A creaky, big-beamed girl with solid
timber hull (like you, my love!).
A group of friends and dock-mates all did
wish me well, while I, above,
on greasy, rain-slicked deck, between
the winch and hydra-crane did wean
my babe from birth. The motor thundered.
My waiving crowd, they must have wondered:

207.

‘What type of fellow takes the dollars
granted by a doting, dead,
rich uncle [to hide the truth, I’d said
my uncle had died] and buys a trawler?’

‘Either he’s a man inspired
– in which case he should be admired –
or he’s obsessed; indeed, fanatical.’

‘Mad, no doubt. At his young age.
In that rust-bucket.’

                                            ‘Who takes sabbatical
from a life with weekly wage
paid by a wife as rich and hot
as Rachel Hunter?’¹⁰⁴ (I told them not
to tell my wife I’d left).

                                            ‘Once gone, ’em
bludgers’ll move in.¹⁰⁵ But hey, good on ’im!’

208.

Then as the water’s rippling arrow
prodded forth my Tug of War
and drove me from the sand-rimmed shore
(which rising tide made extra narrow),
the mist spray-painted the scene behind
an ashen grey. My burning mind
was cauterized of doubt. I only
thought of what lay forward. The isle,
those rocks, the albatross – that lonely
bird whose sanctum I’d defiled.
To make amends, I’d packed some fish,
some frozen herring (I’d partly wished
we might be friends, that I could feed it)
but it turned out that I wouldn’t need it.

209.

My darling rock, however, was waiting
at the rendezvous, as we’d
agreed. And trusty Tug – her speed
reduced, her engine room pulsating,
her pale white skin all varicose veined
with squiggly patches of rust – remained
on dutiful course; and soon that gentle
mottled hump of earth appeared
amidst the twitching, temperamental
sea. But just as I had feared,
that lovely rump, that winsome curve
of land which thrilled me to observe,
and filled me with the urge to snuggle,
put up a wanton virgin’s struggle.

210.

Upon her sea-bed, my sweet, seductive,
callipygian maid there lay
with haunches daringly displayed;
yet when I groped, her sharp obstructive
rocks began to lash and swipe – and spit.
Alas (shy thing!), she didn’t permit
my larger, unfamiliar vessel
a place to mount (the way she’d let
my smaller skiff so smoothly nestle
midst her crags the night we’d met).
I lewdly circled – a bachelor Sheikh,
with trailing, gold-trimmed robe my wake.
I stopped, then tried to wrestle closer,
perhaps to better diagnose her.

211.

But no! The surging sea (now higher).
My growing desire to land. The slap
of tide against her loins. Though gaps
and fissures caught my probing eyes, her
chiseled features wouldn’t dilate
for me. I trust you won’t berate
me, reader – a lesser ship; a greater
number of trips. I know. You’re right.
I could have saved some loads for later
and tamed my bride without the fight.
But as I’ve said before: My mind
is not – was not – that common kind:
a mind that plans, is shrewd and tactical.
When life means nothing, why be practical?

And O that unctuous, lubricating
mud! Your breasts like oysters glossed
in scrumptious espagnole sauce;
but what I found most loin-inflating
was how your crevices were filled
up each with mire. And how I thrilled
to sound their depths, my plumpus corpus!
To feel around your blubber-spheres
my darling whale. . .

                                   ‘!’

                                          ‘Okay then, porpoise.’

‘My panties were on. And my brassiere.
You say you’re not, in truth, a bard;
but such a claim is truly hard
to believe. Such lyrical agility
does damage to your credibility.’

201.

‘Would we be hiding here, my mistress,
if I was so sincere? While I’m
digressing aimlessly in rhyme
(which critics will deem both “thrilling” and “listless”)
my crime stays unconfessed. I said
my story’s true. Had I, instead,
claimed I was always true, plain-speaking,
that I was empty of desire
and never scheming or self-seeking,
what sort of trust would I inspire?
Our reader has been kind. To give
some lodging to a fugitive.
And if I claimed I’m sheriff here,
the daemon-hunting seraph here,

202.

then who’d believe me? When I mistreated
such kind, affectionate parents who cared
so much for me they weren’t prepared
to let me go? When I retreated
from their lives, their only son,
declared my marriage over-done?
And when, in hospital, my mad-bitch
wife now lies, while I this old
refuge inhabit, a writer’s pad which
thrills the literati (who hold
their parties here, extol the man,
as if his life were greater than
his books. Their parties, of course, just frighten
his ghost, who just wants peace to write in)

203.

– inhabit with a large but nimble
lover, not to mention a ghost
who types all night but writes, at most,
the vaguest imprint, some unknown symbol
upon an unturned roller . . . ’

                                                     ‘What time
you’re wasting, Arcady! Two dozen lines
for what? You sure digression’s stanzas
are worth it? Readers may find
these maundering extravaganzas
signs the poet must be broke.’

‘A rest, my love. A slow back-stroke
in heaving seas. Must I forever
crawl and kick in this endeavor?

204.

Besides, you cheat me of some credit
here. A hill requires ridges, crags
– not height alone – if it’s to snag
the best of climbers. If hikers tread it
easily, how can it earn
respect? So too these lyrics turn
into an epic if digression
rifts and cleaves the reader’s path.’

‘ . . . and such a candid, cool confession
may incur your readers’ wrath!
And turn them to a simpler book.
Be practical! Without a hook,
why fish at all? What good is carving
couplets when your body’s starving?

205.

Not to mention mine! I’m tempted
to write your story myself! Its start
and end I know. It’s just the part
between from which I was exempted.’

She says to me:
                              ‘But could those veiling
drops of unwiped liquid block
that inner sense, that visceral shock
a father feels whose child is ailing?
And if he did not see your stare,
I’m sure he felt you sitting there.’

My hackles raise. I want to scold her:
‘If you insist on resting your chin,
then use my lap and not my shoulder!’

It’s been twelve days since she moved in.
Twelve days since pestilent despair
was banished from this refuge where
I had, till then, worked so impassively.
But with her here – and here so . . . massively –

195.

I find myself much more attracted
to this, this perfumed present tense,
than to those pungent, brackish scents
I smell each time my past’s enacted.
For O! What waves of pure delight
enveloped me the other night
when Nutmeg’s face, all streaked with juices
met my straining, harrowed eyes!
She still had nasty scars and bruises
round her stomach, arms and thighs –
but O! Her face! Her lovely face!
A huge full-moon with ample space
for all her features – stern and succulent,
weepy, broad, infirm and truculent.

196.

‘But did I say you could explore them?
[She interrupts again!] What type
of man is so excited to wipe
a woman’s nose? A website for them
must be somewhere on the Net,
with images of shiny, wet
and raw-pink nostrils!’

‘Let prudes rebuke us!’
I say. ‘Your breasts are glorious, true.
But O to see them gleam with mucus,
dimpled with your body’s dew –
O lovely, leaking darling! It’s not
some dreamy Aphrodite’s snot
I seek. It’s yours I find delicious.
Your body’s sweeter when lubricious.

197.

When we roll about in dripping
glands and rheum-anointed skin;
and all that sloppy ooze within
is offered for my famished sipping;
and my embrace is, truth be known,
more slip than grip, as flesh and bone
dissolve into a slick erotic
slime, a kind of primal brew
that’s – help me, rhyme – that’s amniotic!

Last week, the howling rain, do you
recall it? The way our love-born scents
into a single, fetid blend condensed;
your screams, though bold, all peaceful, quiet,
as night time is when crickets riot.’

198.

But, reader – Ms. Gleesome’s heart. We sank it.
That quilt she loved (the one whose fame
was stitched in it by Janet Frame)¹⁰²
the karpok pillow, tartan blanket,
ancient mattress – how soon they were
a sodden clump, a ball of fur.
It was impossible to make it
tidy. O poor Ms. Gleesome! Nor could
we dress before she came. So naked
we stood there, reader! The lemonwood
our shelter. We watched her look around,
then start, as if she’d heard the sound
our hearts were making; then move nearer
to the window, her look severer,

199.

forehead pressed – like half a sandwich –
in the middle, gazing at
the lemonwood where we had sat
with clothes in hands, on gurgling land which
slurped our toes and chilled our knees.
I thought you were praying. But then you sneezed!
Again. A third.

                              ‘She’ll hear us!’ I pleaded.

But soon the window, I noticed, had cleared.
Her tall grey figure had retreated.
And then – how quickly she appeared
again! In front this time! Half-crazed.
Her out-of-joint umbrella raised.
Then down the busy street she darted
– while we our muddy love re-started.

‘Look there!’ dear Memory alerts me.
‘Someone’s coming!’

                                    Into my seat
I sink, and see across the street
a man whose palsied posture hurts me
if I should think too long on it.
His face in shadow, poorly lit.
A stubborn child, perhaps an orphan,
holds him back. He seems to stoop.
Then sunlight makes the foundling morph, and
now I see that I’m its dupe:
That fat orange waif who makes him lag
is just a council rubbish bag.
The aged man in tie and blazer?
A sage, a god to his appraiser.

190.

He taught me history’s charm, its beauty,
mystery, moodiness and whim.
How deeply I admired him
while in his stylish shoes and suit he
walked us through a limestone room
beneath the rocks of Cheops tomb,
or took us to his nana’s village
near Beijing, where ancient times
saw Kublai Khan its houses pillage;
or helped my boyish body climb
(while other kids took tests at school)
a minaret in Istanbul!
And even now I feel his fingers,
smell the flesh where pipe-smoke lingers;

191.

see his limpid eyes – deceptive
really, of the dreamy kind,
as if engaged in life behind
the irises, and yet perceptive
too, collective, too; the orbs
in seconds steal a scene, absorb
its treasures calmly, as art collectors
seem unmoved by styles or shapes,
yet buy them; or Bollywood directors
choose a Western plot to ape,
but only if Aishwarya Rai
can lip-synch Ms. Mangeshkar’s cry.¹⁰¹
Thus father’s tranquil eyes re-rendered
all he saw with added splendor.

192.

A gust of wind. The figure lurches
forth, then drops his load, then turns
around, but rather than adjourn
back to the house, he stops and searches
– for what? A drop of rain? It comes.
A sudden spray of water drums
upon the Jaguar’s windshield, blurring
driveway, man and bright-orange pile;
and still the figure isn’t stirring
– why? He seems to stand awhile
getting wet. Then turns his head.
You’d think, with all those colors bled,
that through my window’s beaded curtain
he could not see me. But am I certain?

Lata Mangeshkar

Or do I hear his voice – ‘Arcady?’
I think I hear it. But even if
he saw the car, and me, the stiff
within, what further probe he made, he
wouldn’t have recognized his son.
I’d grown a beard and had begun
to wear a Cossack’s hat of rabbit’s
fur I’d bought to keep me warm
upon the land I’d soon inhabit.

‘Let’s go,’ I say. And true to form,
my Memory obeys, and starts
the car and – faithful to my heart –
it heeds a wish I’ve left unspoken,
and drives away with wipers unwoken.