I want to toss into this wonderful forum what I consider a "contemporary" masterpiece, a poem that haunts me, not just because of its subject and its masterful story-telling, but also because of its remarkable usage, its imagery, and the turning of its couplets, their drama.
In the Kalahari Desert
The sun rose like a tarnished
looking-glass to catch the sun
and flash His hot message
at the missionaries below--
Isabella and the Rev. Roger Price,
and the Helmores with a broken axle
left, two days behind, at Fever Ponds.
The wilderness was full of home:
a glinting beetle on its back
struggled like an orchestra
with Beethoven. The Halle,
Isabella thought and hummed.
Makololo, their Zulu guide,
puzzled out the Bible, replacing
words he didn't know with Manchester.
Spikenard, alabaster, Leviticus,
were Manchester and Manchester.
His head reminded Mrs Price
of her old pomander stuck with cloves,
forgotten in some pungent tallboy.
The dogs drank under the wagon
with a far away clip-clopping sound,
and Roger spat into the fire,
leaned back and watched his phlegm
like a Welsh rarebit
bubbling on the brands . . .
When Baby died, they sewed her
in a scrap of carpet and prayed,
with milk still darkening
Isabella's grubby button-through.
Makololo was sick next day
and still the Helmores didn't come.
The outspanned oxen moved away
at night in search of water,
were caught and goaded on
to Matabele water-hole--
nothing but a dark stain on the sand.
Makololo drank vinegar and died.
Back they turned for Fever Ponds
and found the Helmores on the way . . .
Until they got within a hundred yards,
the vultures bobbed and trampolined
around the bodies, then swirled
a mile above their heads
like scalded tea leaves.
The Prices buried everything--
all the tattered clothes and flesh,
Mrs Helmore's bright chains of hair,
were wrapped in bits of calico
then given to the sliding sand.
"In the beginning was the Word'--
Roger read from Helmore's Bible
found open at St. John.
Isabella moved her lips,
'The Word was Manchester'.
Shhh, shhh, the shovel said. Shhh . . .
Craig Raine
[This message has been edited by Robert J. Clawson (edited April 25, 2001).]
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