Night and Dreams
“I come to you inI
“I come to you in a dream of ages
past,” sings Crab. He swirls his velvet-
seaweed cloak. “When first we met,
and last, you will recall, I was
imprisoned in your father’s house.”
Sea colours on his carapace,
wave-hiss, tide rustle in his voice.
“Some fiend has tied my fearful claws--”
--Yes, I recall. I must have been
a skinny child of eight or nine
that night my father brought you home--
“No, let me tell,” says Crab, “this is
my aria, my party piece.
Grandmother, mother, father, brother
and you, went to the local theatre
leaving me bound in parching darkness.
I prayed: Redeemer Crab, release me
by your own sidelong righteousness
from these straightforward evildoers.
Take me where my transparent children
float in their manifold sea vision.
Silence. Mouse-whisper, cockroach-scuffle.
I felt, not far, the Brisbane River
ebbing to salt creek, mangrove swamp,
and burst my bonds, O yes I did!
and raged through your dark house, and hid.
That night you dared not go to bed
finding me gone when you returned.
Splintered pencils and toys proclaimed
my ocean strength. How soon forgotten
what Stan and Olly did and said!
Time, time. I felt the tide returning
far off. O Salt Redeemer, come
(I prayed) let navies drown to feed me
with rotten stump, decaying belly,
or if I am to die, allow me
one crunchbone tender-balancing foot.”
--My father caught you. “Ah, he did.
‘Bring me the hatpin.’ Someone put
a diamond eye on a steel stalk
into your father’s hand to stab
my stalked eyes. O the blaze of pain
eclipsing light’s immense mandala!
Seagreen, seablue, I raged to red.
Boiling crab died. I became Crab.”
“I come to you inII
Crab is dressed for the feast: on lettuce shredded
to seaweed ribbons, cracked claws reassembled,
he lies among parsley curls and radish roses.
Our starchy Sunday-snowy cloth is set
with what remains of Greatgrandmother’s china,
translucent white, rimmed with a deepsea blue.
On his great serving dish Crab’s at the centre
of a splendid colour wheel: cucumber slices,
tomato, celery, carrot, egg: my work,
duly admired. My grandmother says grace.
“Where would you eat like this," my father asks,
passing the homemade bread, “except in Queensland?”
A lovely room. Windows give on the garden,
rose and green panes of bubble-glass enchanting
the dullest day. The sideboard mirror offers
more light. Such light, restoring, recomposing
many who dined here. Most of them are dead.
“I come to you inIII
“That’s enough of pentameters,”
says Crab, returning to my dream.
--What shall I write, I ask. He writes,
so I won’t miss his fearful joke:
THE DIRE BELLY VARIATIONS!
Making himself a cairn of stones
he says, “This is my own rock group.
O I’m the original punk rocker
with a hatpin through my brain, my brain,
with a diamond hatpin through my brain.”
--Your jokes are awful. “I know worse.”
--Impossible. “Shall I rehearse
the names of those who’ve died from cancer?
O I’m the original merry prankster,
a diamond hatpin’s all my eye.
Tell me, where are those who ate
my claws, my tender body meat?
Laurel and Hardy fans, long gone!
You cracked my hardware, ate my software.
Now I’m programmed in your brain.”
“I come to you inIV
More and mmore of the great questions,
such as: what am I doing here
in gumboots and a summer nightdress
in a moonlit garden chasing sheep?
The sheep are out. It’s not a dream.
I’ll mend the broken fence tomorrow.
What’s left of night? Enough to dream in.
What dreams will come? Who else but Crab.
I ate him sixty years ago.
Ocean of memory, transposing
feaster and feast. He beckons, wearing
seaweed clothes, with sidelong charm.
“Shall we go to a pirate movie?”
--You like the sea? “I like the bodies,
and ‘Take the lady below and make
her comfortable’, that’s what I like.
I can’t be bothered with the love scenes.
I’ve opened hearts. I know what’s in them.”
At interval he buys refreshments,
“Two seafood sticks. One without crab.
Come live with me and be my supper
where colours have no boundaries,
where every word is writ in water,
I’ll put my arm around your waist.
I’ll put my armour round your waist.
Shell after shell my soft self waxes.
Seek help! Sea kelp for drowning sailors.
Great questions all have wavering answers.”
Ghosts crowd to hear, O my lost loves.
Waking to hard-edge sunlit colours,
sharp birdsong, lamb-bleat, I recall
myself among the moonlit sheep
questioning--what? Why should I care
how long ago my death began?
Am I a ghost dreaming I’m human
with herbs to plant, a fence to mend?
[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited January 15, 2005).]
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