Peelin Orange Read online

  MERVYN MORRIS

  PEELIN ORANGE

  COLLECTED POEMS

  FOR HELEN

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  I DRAW NEAR

  Walk Good

  A Drawing

  The Music Room

  At a Poetry Reading

  Peelin Orange

  Journey into the Interior

  Cave

  They

  Windscreen

  Web

  Birthdays

  Progeny

  Question Time

  There Was a Young Poet

  Chinese Boxes

  Thank-You Note

  Gaffes

  Dream

  Notice

  Mariners

  Dialogue for One

  The Pond

  A Reading

  Stripper

  Muse

  Tutorial

  Oblation

  Gardening

  Storypoem

  Examination Centre

  Interior

  Tunnel

  Toasting a Muse

  Writing

  Working Out

  She

  Shadows

  Counsellor

  Museum Piece

  Dadd, Poor Dadd

  Valley Prince

  Asylum

  Zoo Story

  Encounter

  Critique

  After the Movie

  Data

  The Forest

  Poetry Workshop

  To Tell the Truth

  Going through the Park

  II LOVE IS

  West Indian Love Song

  A Temperate Love Poem

  Dreamtime

  The Reassurance

  Togetherness

  A Voyage

  Womansong

  Critic

  Version

  Workshop

  Short Story

  Memento

  Riding Hood: Version

  Endgame

  Casanova

  Happy Hour

  Moment of Truth

  Peacetime

  Snapshot

  A Memory

  Pantomime

  Persephone

  Night Flight

  Dialogue for Dancers

  Parlour Game

  Storyboard

  Reunion

  An Offering

  Family Pictures

  Love Is

  North Coast Hotel

  For a Son

  Little Boy Crying

  Palimpsest

  At Home

  Games

  Interlude

  Epiphany

  Seen

  Sister

  Acrobat

  Give T’anks

  The Pledge

  She Tells Herself

  She Tells Her Analyst

  Interface

  Autograph Album

  Moth

  Interview

  Proposition One

  The Lovers

  Operation

  Home

  Another Wedding

  Departure Lounge

  Breaking Up

  Pussycat

  Guinea Pig

  Why, This is Hull

  Presences

  Anniversary Proceedings

  III ON HOLY WEEK

  Prologue by the Maker

  Jesus in Gethsemane

  A Priest

  Judas

  Pilate’s Wife

  Pilate

  Peter

  Soldiers

  Simon of Cyrene

  A Woman Named Mary

  Jesus on the Road

  Malefactor (Left)

  Malefactor (Right)

  Centurion

  Mary (Mother)

  John

  Joseph of Arimathaea

  Mary Magdalene

  Thomas

  IV TIME COME

  A Conference Hymn

  Recreation

  Homily

  Transitions

  At Church

  Praise the Lord

  Communion

  Eve

  In the Garden

  Mother of Judas, Mother of God

  Boarding School

  Housemaster at Work

  To a Crippled Schoolmaster

  Outing

  The Castle

  Heritage

  Literary Evening, Jamaica

  Jamaica 1979

  Reprise

  The Roaches

  Sentences for Heritage Week

  The Early Rebels

  The Militant

  Maverick

  Grounation

  Muntu

  Post-Colonial Identity

  For Queen Elizabeth II

  Montage

  Hey, Ref!

  Tournament

  To an Interviewer

  Swimmer

  University Study

  Lecturer

  Fete

  Teacher

  On Campus, Murder

  Having Eyes that See

  Meeting

  Remembering John La Rose

  Nursery

  Case History, Jamaica

  Brief

  Cabal

  Politician Nightmare

  Afro-Saxon

  The House Slave

  I Am the Man

  For 1865

  Advisory

  Catch a Nigger

  For Consciousness

  To an Expatriate Friend

  To the Unknown Non-Combatant

  A Poet of the People

  Narcissus

  Omens

  Greatest Show on Earth

  Behind the Curtain

  Living near the Zoo

  Fable

  Sometimes

  Meeting the Mage

  Satirist

  Death and the Maiden

  Pre-Carnival Party

  A Word

  A Birthday Poem

  Historian

  Jamaican Dance #2

  The Day My Father Died

  Young Widow, Grave

  Farewell Function

  Garden

  Terminal

  A Chant against Death

  Postcard

  My Rodney Poem

  Epitaph

  Soprano

  Lying in State

  A Daughter’s Recollection

  Exhibition

  Au Revoir

  Granny

  Dinner Party

  Diptych

  Legion

  Checking Out

  Acknowledgements

  Index of Titles

  Index of First Lines

  About the Author

  Also by Mervyn Morris

  Copyright

  I DRAW NEAR

  WALK GOOD

  Teck time

  walk good

  Yu buck yu foot

  an memory ketch yu

  like a springe

  A DRAWING

  after M.C. Escher

  the vaulted building

  overlooks the sea

  grave faces locked

  in iron devotion

  two files of monks

  go ritually up and down

  those stairs

  one gawping solitary

  brother down below

  is wondering why

  the cowled monks

  keep on walking walking

  below him still

  another one is

  turned away

  from all that

  self-abusing he

  is looking down

  to sea

  THE MUSIC ROOM

  to you

  who come to hear confession

  in the music room

&nb
sp; we seem

  to know the score

  by art

  embroidering

  the flash

  of revelation

  hush now, something’s coming

  in a rush of silence

  in the too much light

  something’s coming, hush

  AT A POETRY READING

  Negotiating strangers

  and inscrutable desires,

  the old pretenders hope to be

  accepted as constructive liars.

  If, playing parts, they can avoid the spurious

  (the false pretence, the histrionic fraud)

  and manage the occasional epiphany,

  some of the other actors will applaud.

  PEELIN ORANGE

  Dem use to seh

  yu peel a orange

  perfec

  an yu get new clothes

  But when mi father try

  fi teach mi

  slide de knife

  up to de safeguard thumb

  I move de weapon like

  a saw inna mi han

  an de dyamn rind

  break

  An if yu have de time

  yu can come see mi

  in mi ole clothes

  peelin

  JOURNEY INTO THE INTERIOR

  Stumbling down his own oesophagus

  he thought he’d check his vitals out.

  He found the entrails most illegible,

  it wasn’t clear what innards were about.

  He opted to return to air and light

  and certainty; but when he tried

  he found the passage blocked; so now

  he spends the long day groping there, inside.

  CAVE

  but further in

  a lightbeam

  spotted clothing

  on the ground

  a shirt

  that smelt of the man

  tracking

  along close passages

  they picked up

  shoes and socks

  a vest

  his trousers

  finally a brief

  reminder

  smelling of the crutch

  and then at last

  in a little room

  like a cell

  at the centre

  they found him

  huddled naked

  in the dark

  THEY

  they tapped and tapped on the shell

  and the shell broke

  and the yolk broke

  cracked they said it’s cracked

  then they opened the cracked shell wide

  and cried

  and cried

  WINDSCREEN

  De garage people

  seh de neat

  crack in mi windscreen

  bound to grow

  an though it hardly showin

  now, between vibration an de heat

  it noh mus grow?

  I climb inside

  an measure. So I know:

  de crack is growin.

  WEB

  skeins of

  perception

  catching

  light

  gossamer

  filaments

  of radiating

  glances

  please

  do not touch

  BIRTHDAYS

  The game is metaphor.

  ‘Birthdays: reassuring corners

  in the long, dark room of time.’

  ‘Reminder knots,’ another voice

  proposes. ‘Birthdays are reminders

  time is heartless, beauty fades.’

  There is no string of time

  unravelling till the end is cut,

  only a dark pool swirling –

  letters, matches, galliwasps,

  toothpaste tubes and railway tickets,

  myriad markers from our lives

  in seminal confusion, falsified

  by cuckoo-clocks and calendars.

  I, celebrating birthdays

  in the whirlpool, splutter,

  coughing to clear the phlegm.

  PROGENY

  ‘Yours, but only partly

  yours,’ they said.

  As if on cue, the poem

  shifted in his head.

  QUESTION TIME

  sometimes a poem

  is a mask

  to ritualize

  connection

  & preserve

  a little something

  shared a little

  something treasured

  in pretence

  that privacy

  lives on within

  community

  THERE WAS A YOUNG POET

  There was a young poet

  who thrived on his pain

  (Hey ho the sun and the rain)

  His woman ran off

  and he found her again

  (Hey ho the sun and the rain)

  It pleased him to ask for

  a foot in the face

  (Hey ho the sun and the rain)

  Whenever it hurt enough

  words fell in place

  (with a Hey ho the sun and the rain)

  It happened one summer

  nobody knows why

  (Hey ho the sun and the rain)

  The woman he said he loved

  happened to die

  (Hey ho the sun and the rain)

  He wrote and he wrote

  it was his way to grieve

  (with a Hey ho the sun and the rain)

  The pleasure grief gave him

  you wouldn’t believe

  (Hey ho the sun and the rain)

  At length when the sorrow

  began to wear thin

  (Hey ho the sun and the rain)

  He went out and brought

  a new torturess in

  (Hey ho the sun and the rain)

  Turned out she loved him

  he found out too late

  (Hey ho the sun and the rain)

  He’s happy as hell

  but he cannot create

  (Hey ho the sun and the rain)

  CHINESE BOXES

  At every border stood a wall.

  But he would not adapt

  for anything: that we are trapped

  he wouldn’t buy at all

  until …

  He burrowed in the dark, a blind

  adventurer. He surfaced. Wall behind.

  Before him stood another, higher.

  THANK-YOU NOTE

  first you say

  i mustnt write a

  routine letter

  then photographs

  arrive

  & photocopies

  & you say

  tomorrow

  tomorrow

  i shall write

  & then in time you

  dont know how

  to say i should have

  written you before but

  this is just to say

  GAFFES

  We try to smother

  troublesome remarks,

  but hurtful truths

  (however casual) survive,

  fluttering tenaciously,

  defiantly alive.

  DREAM

  I dreamt

  I grabbed a pail

  to dip some water up

  to drink

  and saw

  things floating

  in the murk

  And then I woke up

  thirsty

  NOTICE

  last week a tripper

  drowned

  going too far

  from shore

  the bloated carcass

  ran aground

  days later

  rolled up near

  this weather-

  beaten notice

  here

  Dangerous Currents

  Beware

  beware

  MARINERS

  who are

  the night-cruisers

  slicing
through dark

  dim on the foredeck

  scanning for shark

  we are

  the seafarers

  sick in the deep

  bilious in daylight

  troubled asleep

  we are the sea-searchers

  scaling the night

  keen in the darkness

  fish-eyed in light

  DIALOGUE FOR ONE

  for the NDTC

  in this

  reflective

  exercise

  the bodies

  imitate

  contraction

  and release

  each

  glistening

  performing

  mirror

  honouring

  the other

  artfully

  dancing

  identity

  THE POND

  There was this pond in the village

  and little boys, he heard till he was sick,

  were not allowed too near.

  Unfathomable pool, they said,

  that swallowed men and animals just so;

  and in its depths, old people said,

  swam galliwasps and nameless horrors;

  bright boys kept away.

  Though drawn so hard by prohibitions,

  the small boy, fixed in fear, kept off;

  till one wet summer, grass growing lush,

  paths muddy, slippery, he found himself