Four Poems

by

Cyril Dabydeen

University of Ottawa

Copyright © 2000 by Cyril Dabydeen, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. Copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that the editors are notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.

My friend's manners never cease to amaze

as he tells his young daughter

I suck my big toe when I sleep to rouse her fancy.

She's bound to remember such things

that will make an older child blush.

He welcomes me with zest--

Says I hardly even kissed him,

rests his case by insisting he's not shy,

and has lost a good deal of his anger, naturally,

And whatever is left of it, he adds,

is used to good purpose.

I congratulate him on his manner;

After nine years life must be different,

and we talk about filling the gap of years

with laughter.

Pain in his eyes, he still takes various

members of a spreading family

by surprise. And when I leave--

I imagine him making arresting turns

on the Don Valley

Parkway, as I detect a conspiracy of sorts

In his suggestion that friends must stick

together, if only to make the children remember

what's long-lost, or is yet to come.

I continue to sing of other loves,

Places...moments when I am furious,

When you are pale and I am strong

As we come one to another.

The ethnics at our door

Malingering with heritage,

My solid breath--like stones breaking.

At a railway station making much ado about much,

This boulder and Rocky Mountain,

CPR... heaving with a head tax

As I am Chinese in a crowd,

Japanese at the camps;

It is also World War 11:

Panting, I am out of breath.

So I keep on talking

With blood coursing through my veins:

The heart's call for employment equity,

The rhapsody of police shootings in Toronto;

This gathering of the stars one by one,

Codifying them and calling them planets--

One country really...

Or galaxies of province after province,

A distinct society too--

Quebec or Newfoundland; the Territories...

How far we make a map out of our solitudes,

As we are still Europe, Asia,

Africa; and the Aborigine in me

Suggests love above all else--

The bear's configuration in the sky.

Other places, events; a turbanned RCMP,

These miracles--

My heritage and quest, heart throbbing,

Voices telling me how much I love you,

YOU LOVE ME; and we're always springing surprises,

Like vandalism at a Jewish cemetery,

Or Nelson Mandela's visit to Ottawa

As I raise a banner high on Parliament Hill--

Crying "Welcome!"--we are, you are...

OH CANADA!

The beauty of toes

on soft ground,

far from the illimitable sky;

the soil topsy-turvy,

the curvature of flesh

or splinters of wood

as we look down from above:

who we are, how many fingers

we have left, how many toes,

this exchange with antlers

or simply make-believe.

Nails growing on one hand,

horns becoming extremities

as we're still on circular ground;

and it takes seventy years

or more before things begin

to wither and die,

as I keep remembering a new passage,

the heart palpitating,

the lungs giving out

in a whoosh!

Breath of air really,

grasping at things, then moving

from tree to tree for a better view;

even being a sloth of sorts,

hanging with one arm--

the liana bent I'm sure.

Here a white-watered terrain

close to the Zambezi and the Nile,

the Brahmaputra making us believe

all rivers are one long vein;

the Ganges and St Lawrence too,

if you must know; then

the Orinoco and the Amazon--

at this juncture.

I walk barefooted,

my toes' indelible imprint

on delta, topsoil, the terrain

of wood and plaster,

because of who I am--

or we all are.

Nurturing false hopes, dreams

also putative, as we are here

to stay, believe me.

Pyramids of lost time, an obelisk

sun scorching as the toes

keep making us go on to places,

yet leaving us at the desert limits.

Ah, the Pharoahs have carved nothing,

hands clawing for more space

in a tomb or mausoleum

with the noise of tourists being all,

my counting to ten in Arabic...

what Ptolemy or young Tutenkhamun

have said, always with portents:

signs coming down through the ages,

I must consider or actually believe in.

The graven image, my offering

prayers to stranger gods,

Ra no less, because of the magic

of numbers; or a cat carved

with a self-styled grimace.

With Copernicus I continue to think

of the round earth differently,

the sun's position always changing;

the toes becoming gnarled

without perfection: closer to the heart,

lungs, face...eyes...ears...lips.

Indeed I have scores to settle,

over vast areas of topsoil:

with the jay bird and crow,

or being a desert albatross,

or a condor in South America--

the toes bringing me here, and

I cry out with the heart's

authentic gasp.

At the Bronx Zoo or some place

where the silk cotton tree bends,

forming a rainbow, I keep looking down--

toes ochre or sepia-brown, registering

the tradition of webbed feet,

the ducks' own no less...

digging in, holding up myself

before becoming mudsplattered...

finally being on solid ground.

I make amends and keep wondering

who I am, and why there's really no

other place to go to: no other boundary

in the mind despite welcoming truths

about a far place in a wide universe.

The toes simply interchange

with fingers, lips, eyes, ears;

nostrils becoming flared,

bringing us to this realization

that we will live out our lives fully

without reconnoitering on topsoil.

The maple tree springing up then,

as we move closer together, or keep

being too long in one place, or

forever--

at a standstill.

I regret not telling you before,

how you alone carried

the sun on your back

or laughed with giddiness

in your veins and believing

all worlds are the same.

In this street or that village,

with houses on stilts--

your lips chapped,

muttering at night

far away with phrases

extending themselves to me.

My implicit yet unworthy act,

or again laughing from

distance, as we call out

each other's name;and an aunt

who hurled abuse

against the guava and jamun trees,

With the leaves falling one by one,

scattered in the wind...

and my heart beating as the moon keeps

coming down--

and I want to bring you gifts

I’ve kept hidden from myself—

my familiar words' absence.