Courantijn River
Breathe in, and you are that clarity
cradled before word, before the fracture
between rainforest and jungle: transparency
our small boat hummed toward, away
from the brackish coast, a town
of rice, white waves of egrets a tattered flag
rippling before tractors, palm-lined canals choked with algae
and lotus a red deep as the heart
tongued open. Heartwood, what mangrove lacks
levitating low tide, ornate signatures rooted
in the sweetness of salt. Such perfect balance, such
perfect revolution: the eldest son lights
the pyre, the old man burns on shore. Mangrove
raises up the salt, sweats fine crystals from leaf tips drenched
in sun. It isn’t true fire is weakened
by light: even in tropical noon those flames
eclipsed the white sand slowly shrinking beneath the sea’s
unraveling hem. In the capital, revolution is a marble frieze
erected amid the blown-apart police headquarters’
surviving pillars, a beautiful woman in flowing
stone robes, that archetypal
iconography, not mother or lover but virgin
blessing the men’s guns, the waterkant
she faces. Rivers
are roads in this country, whole villages exist
only by water. Four hours into the forest, we landed
in the village Independence was to have flowered
to a second Paramaribo. An engine of rust and leaf
stranded near the stelling where we docked--
the track’s steel backbone, wood crossties laid
like a xylophone’s ascending scales, disappeared
in the green, music
never struck; even the small monument I stumbled
on, its gushing inscription dedicating the Opening
of West Surinam, nearly lost in emerald’s
cursive scrawl, those same vines villagers hack
to free a day’s path. Maybe you’ve read
how mangrove spread across this world
simply by floating--Kashmir survived as the blue
of his eyes, milk and honey and Krishna, the blue light
of God, dipped into the panch amrit the widow offers
each pair of cupped hands. Cane
now entirely fringe, the sugar fields
are ready to burn. The cattle have stopped dying
of old age in the grass. Who’s left to bury them
with ceremony as they fall? The slaughterhouse,
she says, is kinder than carrion carrying off
those soft eyes in their claws.
Continental drift, the earth as steeled plates
crashing together--however you read
the history of the planet, it all scopes down
to points of ash, small fires dotting a forest village
to keep the bush down. Next time you come,
Sohan says, Apoera will be bright bright, meaning
the mine will be open; already the men are here
digging ditches for cables; already a clearing, a satellite dish
cocking its ear, hooked to the harbinger,
the one working phone villagers keep arriving at
on bicycles. Already the local prostitutes are overwhelmed
despite the men’s general shrug, they all have AIDS.
The former dictator’s party initials
paint the walls, the imported American pine
at the guesthouse where the men overnight. Another election
in the works. The night after talking
to the woman whose lover was tortured
and killed for his writing, I dreamed a head
entirely face, eight eyes encircling the skull, each
stabbed out. In the forest, every little boy carries a machete.
Things grow so quickly, the green springs back so fast
without fire, without the earth-mowers the mine
is moving in. Kan-kan, mahogany, purple heart--everything that shades us
will be cut down. In the city houses go up in
anonymous flame to keep witnesses quiet; the crumbling
remains of government buildings burned long ago,
left standing. No one forgets. What they saw
was two decades ago; this year the national census
went up in flames, two torched warehouses. Held as they were
only on paper, the name of each citizen
extinguished--
Try holding
your breath, try saying nothing as everything comes down
around you. Close your eyes: even in bright sun, the world is milk,
cloudless. Listen: do you hear the teeth
approaching, do you trust the light, how it eats equally into
shadow and green? Have you noticed? The body without air goes blue
letting in the sky.
From Biogeography (Tupelo 2008). First published in Green Mountains Review.
For a related photo gallery, click here.
Breathe in, and you are that clarity
cradled before word, before the fracture
between rainforest and jungle: transparency
our small boat hummed toward, away
from the brackish coast, a town
of rice, white waves of egrets a tattered flag
rippling before tractors, palm-lined canals choked with algae
and lotus a red deep as the heart
tongued open. Heartwood, what mangrove lacks
levitating low tide, ornate signatures rooted
in the sweetness of salt. Such perfect balance, such
perfect revolution: the eldest son lights
the pyre, the old man burns on shore. Mangrove
raises up the salt, sweats fine crystals from leaf tips drenched
in sun. It isn’t true fire is weakened
by light: even in tropical noon those flames
eclipsed the white sand slowly shrinking beneath the sea’s
unraveling hem. In the capital, revolution is a marble frieze
erected amid the blown-apart police headquarters’
surviving pillars, a beautiful woman in flowing
stone robes, that archetypal
iconography, not mother or lover but virgin
blessing the men’s guns, the waterkant
she faces. Rivers
are roads in this country, whole villages exist
only by water. Four hours into the forest, we landed
in the village Independence was to have flowered
to a second Paramaribo. An engine of rust and leaf
stranded near the stelling where we docked--
the track’s steel backbone, wood crossties laid
like a xylophone’s ascending scales, disappeared
in the green, music
never struck; even the small monument I stumbled
on, its gushing inscription dedicating the Opening
of West Surinam, nearly lost in emerald’s
cursive scrawl, those same vines villagers hack
to free a day’s path. Maybe you’ve read
how mangrove spread across this world
simply by floating--Kashmir survived as the blue
of his eyes, milk and honey and Krishna, the blue light
of God, dipped into the panch amrit the widow offers
each pair of cupped hands. Cane
now entirely fringe, the sugar fields
are ready to burn. The cattle have stopped dying
of old age in the grass. Who’s left to bury them
with ceremony as they fall? The slaughterhouse,
she says, is kinder than carrion carrying off
those soft eyes in their claws.
Continental drift, the earth as steeled plates
crashing together--however you read
the history of the planet, it all scopes down
to points of ash, small fires dotting a forest village
to keep the bush down. Next time you come,
Sohan says, Apoera will be bright bright, meaning
the mine will be open; already the men are here
digging ditches for cables; already a clearing, a satellite dish
cocking its ear, hooked to the harbinger,
the one working phone villagers keep arriving at
on bicycles. Already the local prostitutes are overwhelmed
despite the men’s general shrug, they all have AIDS.
The former dictator’s party initials
paint the walls, the imported American pine
at the guesthouse where the men overnight. Another election
in the works. The night after talking
to the woman whose lover was tortured
and killed for his writing, I dreamed a head
entirely face, eight eyes encircling the skull, each
stabbed out. In the forest, every little boy carries a machete.
Things grow so quickly, the green springs back so fast
without fire, without the earth-mowers the mine
is moving in. Kan-kan, mahogany, purple heart--everything that shades us
will be cut down. In the city houses go up in
anonymous flame to keep witnesses quiet; the crumbling
remains of government buildings burned long ago,
left standing. No one forgets. What they saw
was two decades ago; this year the national census
went up in flames, two torched warehouses. Held as they were
only on paper, the name of each citizen
extinguished--
Try holding
your breath, try saying nothing as everything comes down
around you. Close your eyes: even in bright sun, the world is milk,
cloudless. Listen: do you hear the teeth
approaching, do you trust the light, how it eats equally into
shadow and green? Have you noticed? The body without air goes blue
letting in the sky.
From Biogeography (Tupelo 2008). First published in Green Mountains Review.
For a related photo gallery, click here.