A
Roman Column
Prose
as Subverted
Poetry
Neeman
Sobhan
I am feeling
too lazy to write. I am on vacation--in my own home, and it
is paradise. The crickets have set up their maniacal orchestra
in my garden, and the gnashing and sawing of their rusty violins
send up the music of somnolence essential accompaniment to
lazy, summer days.
I walked
up the road to the Vet and while he checked my dog he made
conversation: "So, where are you going on vacation?"
"Vacation from what?" I smile as I point at the
blue sky, the densely pine-wooded neighbourhood, the sunlight
streaked with shadows cast from flower clotted balconies lining
the hilly street. "I am staying put and enjoying this
beautiful season from the comfort of my own home." "Brava!"
The Vet nods enthusiastically (he is German in origin and
pronounces his 'r's gutturally making his 'brava' sound as
'bghava')."You're absolutely right, signora. In fact,
" he lowers his voice conspiratorially, " I have
convinced my wife to do the same. She is Italian and you know,
for them going away on vacation is a social thing, a matter
of prestige. The neighbours must know that you can afford
to go away--to the sea, the mountains, to another place, another
country."
We both
gaze out at the bougainvillea spilling from the red-tiled
roof next door and the birdcalls drifting like musical smoke
from behind the clutch of umbrella pines at the end of this
quiet street, and we start to laugh. I speak first, "Why
run around in this heat to find a beautiful place? The sea
side is fifteen minutes from here; the mountains are barely
half an hour away; and so many operas and entertainment are
going on in town, not twenty minutes from us." "Exactly.
Look how bronzed I am already," Dr. Mulhoff shows off
his arms under his half-sleeved shirt. "And I only go
after work, to join my wife and daughter at the Ostia beach."
"We do the same, professore." (In Italian a professor
indicates a medical doctor, and dottore is an epithet applied
to address anyone as a show of respect!) I continue, "And
anyway, in my culture, exposing yourself to the brutal sunrays
during the peak hours is silly. Here, the sun doesn't set
till so late and it is particularly beautiful around five
in the evening. The water is warm, the sun is mellow and there
is still light at nine in the evening for a sundowner and
dinner in one of the beach restaurants. Then, you can come
home to your own bed and spend the rest of the day lazing
on your own terrace rather than an impersonal hotel."
My dog
listens to our exchange patiently then jerks me away with
a shake of his leash to explore the neighbourhood, which his
wondrous nose discovers as new every single walking excursion
we make. I love this innocent enthusiasm of the animal. He
is a poet at heart! His world is ever fresh, an adventure
that he sniffs out with pleasure, reading the news of other
dogs in the cracks and crevices of the pavement and the walls
of the houses we pass. At each gate post which warns 'Attenti
al cane' or from where the noise of barks issue, he lifts
his hind leg and leaves his liquid visiting card!
I return
to my terrace and sink into the book left open in the shade.
I am reading a stunningly beautiful novel called The Poisonwood
Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, who I discover as no surprise,
is a poet too. I trust a fiction writer who also writes poetry.
This was apparent when I had randomly opened the book in the
bookshop on the sentence that decided I had to buy it. This
line described the narrator at a picnic lunch "watching
ants boil darkly over the crumbs." 'Boiling' instead
of the ordinary 'teeming'! Wow! That is the sort of literary
sensibility I appreciate, and Kingsolver straddles the world
of poetry and prose, which in my opinion is where all great
writing lies.
I must
share two passages from the book with my readers. The first
is the exquisite opening page, describing a forest in the
Congo where the main protagonist-narrator has arrived with
her family and her preacher husband. (The story is the tragic
undoing of an evangelical priest who thinks that he has arrived
in post-colonial Africa to save the natives. Neo-colonisers
like Bush and his cohorts would do well to read a sensitive
book like this about the dangers of tampering in a world best
left to itself. A potent and poetic cautionary tale.) The
second passage hints at the tragedy of personal and human
history when arrogant conquering and 'civilising' forces are
unleashed in a world that has its own natural rhythm, order
and chaos best suited to it, best left to evolve in its own
way.
"…First,
picture the forest. I want you to be its conscience, the eyes
in the trees. The trees are columns of slick, brindled bark
like muscular animals grown beyond all reason. Every space
is filled with life: delicate, poisonous frogs...Vines strangling
their own kin in the everlasting wrestle for sunlight….the
breathing of monkeys...a glide of snake belly on the branch...a
single-file army of ants biting a mammoth tree into uniform
grains and hauling it down to the dark for their ravenous
queen. And, in reply, a choir of seedlings arching their necks
out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. This
forest eats itself and lives forever."
The second
passage: "She is inhumanly alone. And then, all at once,
she isn't. A beautiful animal stands on the other side of
the water. They look up from their lives, woman and animal,
amazed to find themselves in the same place. He freezes, inspecting
her with his black-tipped ears…the forest's shadows
fall into lines across his white striped flanks. His stiff
forelegs splay out like stilts, for he has been caught in
the act of reaching down for water…Finally he surrenders
his surprise, looks away, and drinks…. That one time
and no other the okapi came to the stream and I was the only
one to see it…
"I
didn't know any name for what I'd seen until some years afterward
in Atlanta, when I attempted briefly to consecrate myself
in the public library, believing every crack in my soul could
be chinked with a book. I read that the male okapi is smaller
than the female, and more shy, and that hardly anything else
is known about them. For hundreds of years people in the Congo
Valley spoke of this beautiful, strange beast. When European
explorers got wind of it, they declared it legendary: a unicorn.
Another fabulous tale from the dark domain of poison-tipped
arrows and bone-pierced lips. Then in the 1920's, when elsewhere
in the world the menfolk took a break between wars …a
white man finally did set eyes on the okapi. I can picture
him spying on it with binoculars, raising up. ..the rifle
sight, taking it for its own. A family of them now reside
in the New York Museum of Natural History, dead and stuffed,
with standoffish glass eyes… And so the okapi is now
by scientific account a real animal. Merely real, not legendary...
"Oh,
but I know better...consider…an Africa unconquered altogether.
Imagine those first Portugese adventurers approaching the
shore, spying on the jungles edge…imagine that by some
miracle of dread or reverence they lowered their spyglasses,
turned…sailed on. Imagine all who came after doing the
same. What would that Africa be now? All I can think of is
the other okapi, the one they used to believe in. A unicorn
that could look you in the eye.”
I am lost
to the world, far away in the magic forest of prose as subverted
poetry. Till next week.
Copyright
(R) thedailystar.net 2004
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