Free The Cinnamon Peeler by Michael Ondaatje

where was I?
    – somewhere and married.
    (In ’64 everybody got married)
    Whatever we are now we were then.
    Some days those maps collide
    falling into future land.
    It seems for hours
    we have sat in your car,
    almost valentine’s day,
    I’ve got a plane to meet and I
    hold your rose for you.
    This talking
    like a slow dance,
    the sharing of earphones.
    Since I got separated
    I cannot hold
    my brain in my arms anymore.
    Sitting in the back alley
    this new mapping, hello
    to the terra nova.
    Now we watch each other
    in our slow walks towards
    and out of everything
    we wanted to know in ’64
             *
    And for George moonlight
    became her. Curious. After years of wit
    he saw it enter her and believed,
    singing love songs in the back seat.
    Three of us drive downtown
    in our confusions
    goodbye to the hills of the 30’s
    Sinned, torn apart, how do each of us
    share our hearts
    and George still ‘hearty,’ bad jokes
    scattering to the group,
    does not converse, but he sings the heartbreakers
    badly and precisely in the back seat
    so we moon, we tough
             *
    Kissing the stomach
    kissing your scarred
    skin boat. History
    is what you’ve travelled on
    and take with you
    We’ve each had our stomachs
    kissed by strangers
    to the other
    and as for me
    I bless everyone
    who kissed you here
    *

(Ends of the Earth)
                   For you I have slept
    like an arrow in the hall
    pointing towards your wakefulness
    in other time zones
                   And wary
    piece by piece
    we put each other together
                             your past
    that of one who has walked
    through fifteen strange houses
    in order to be here
    the charm of Wichita
    gunmen in your bones
                   the 19th century
    strolling like a storm
    through your long body
    that history I read in comic books
    and on the flickering screen
    when I was thirteen
    Now we are cats-cradled
    in the Pacific
    how does one avoid this?
    Go to the ends of the earth?
    The loose moon follows
                             Wet moonlight
                             recalls childhood
    the long legged daughter
                   the stars
    of Wichita in the distance
    midnight and hugging
    against her small chest
    the favourite book,
    Goodnight Moon
    under the covers she
    reads its courtly order
    its list of farewells
    to everything
                             We grow less complex
    We reduce ourselves The way lovers
    have their small cheap charms
    silver lizard,
    a stone
    Ancient customs
    that grow from dust
                             swirled out
    from prairie into tropic
    Strange how the odours meet
    How, however briefly, bedraggled
    history
                   focuses
Skin Boat
    ‘
A sheet of water near your breasts

where I can sink

like a stone
’
    PAUL ELUARD
HER HOUSE
    Because she has lived alone, her house is the product of nothing but herself and necessity. The necessity of growing older and raising children. Others drifted into her life, in and out and they have changed her, added things, but I have never been into a home that is a revelation of character and time as much as hers. It contains those she knows and has known and she has distilled all of her journey. When I first met her I saw nothing but her, and now, as she becomes familiar, I recognize the small customs.
    The problem for her is leaving. She says, ‘Last night I was listening to everything I know so well, and I imagined what if I woke up in a year’s time and there were different trees.’ Streets, the weight of sea air, certain birds who recognize your shrubbery, that too holds you,