Aeolus in Caraguatatuba
I who understand the sky am a stranger here.
The dark shoulder of the mountain oppresses me in dreams,
And I hear the rain’s endless syllable in every room.
Yet one morning the day dawns clear: early sun
Angles between the trees to where I lie, and I feel
The feather-soft suggestive whisper of a place, lover-like,
Drawing aside its workaday clothes to admit a glimpse
Of the mysteries within.
So, humble supplicant, I gaze up
And see expanding galaxies of pollen tumbling down
A sunbeam, and butterflies both black as sin and white
As grace pirouetting around a slender carnelian spike.
All around me, life clicks and furls incorrigibly:
Clusters of obscene fruit like candied kidneys
Teem among matted, decomposing ferns,
Pink phalli droop from emerald splayed palms
And white lilies clamour beneath the eaves
From which depend pure clumps of digitalis.
I twist a lime off a laden tree and begin to examine
A wild pineapple – and in that second a bird explodes
Past my ear in a breathless rush of dust and wings.
No inward reverie on this journey, I see: to reach the heart
I must stay awake.
So I follow the bird’s dip
And swoop to a maze of vines, where I find the very semblance
Of the chaffinch, fringilla coelebs, that haunts the sun-bright woods
Below Olympus – only someone has chosen to dip this one alternately
In pots of the first pure colours: an azure head and lime-green wings,
A sunflower back and splashes of indigo at wingtip, tail and breast.
Little messenger, I consider its meaning as bright black eyes
Consider me in turn, head cocked from side to side, a single chirp,
And he’s gone, faster than thought, without a sound.
I stand in wonder, as insight breaks in
On me in linden light. Yes, I think, the jungle oppresses
And encroaches, reclaiming in a month of rank proliferation
The pattern that years of civilisation have fought to impress,
And yet it conceals within the wall of trees this secret face
That is indivisible from rot and rain and the moving carpet
Of the jungle floor. Visible only when it has conquered you entirely,
Its beauty is equal to any sea-cave or dryad’s grove,
Superior to any manmade thing because free from intention.
Yes, that’s the real magic –
And these people know it, these crude clay people
Whom I’ve spent five years scorning and half-despising
For their crooked shacks and sentimental songs: they have
The jungle in their blood – sluggish and dark, flowing down
Unnameable rivers beneath primeval trees, where life is layered
And clotted over sprawled trunks and creepers that fasten
Themselves to slimed black rock or push through corpses,
Reaching for the thick black earth.
Yes, they embrace the fear that comes
From standing in a clearing and seeing the jungle always at the edge
Of sight, a wave of darkness waiting to bury everything that men
And gods have made, yet which is held at bay for a moment
In this suspension of cirrus and pollen and light.
