The driver made the ride scream all the
way
Down the road from Bangkok,
professional
Past low foundries, platoons of
effigies
Blurring like change, green and sweat,
square shacks
Body shops each block like the vehicles
here
Are broken.
The green Island rises above grey sea
Like a well sung myth. Roof gone high
and wide
Above the shrubs, pale sand, dark palm
fronds splay
Like torn Venetian blinds against the
sky
Pennants of a paradisal army
And some, beetle eaten their headdress
slipped
Make littoral a harbour of stalled
ships
The tropic thick air presses like a
dilute sea
Seasoned by butterflies, blooms, these
foreign
To my eye the lizards, bugs, the plants
here
Flower until they die.
From the shore at night you'd be
forgiven
For thinking the fishing boats far
cities
Lost Atlantis and its suburbs risen
From the sea. What chance do squid
have, what pity
Soft flourescence the most delightful
spell
Of all sweet dances in staged Darwin's hall
What chance do they stand against the
blazing lure
The Venusian halogens
To see such beauty so immense and pure
That we could not know, but to call it
awe
So they rush to the net, the plate,
their end.
There are young teak stands, seas of
cane acreage
And the jungle brush fires reak like
temples.
Throughout the year, when the cane
stands tall
After sundown men go from the village
Set flaming torches to ripe sugar
And it lights the countryside like
pillage.
The saddest part is to see elephants
Balding pink patches, hunched, dropped
ears, limp trunks
Chained waiting for riders they cannot
want
Far from home jungles and most often
drunk.
A couple, young and bronzed track the
water
Footprints snakewise though the sand
and flotsam
Their hands are not together, heads are
down
This dream they both dreamt in another
town
Seems dreamt now in separate minds
today
Like they woke in a brochure and full
of reproach
The saltwater washes their tracks away.
