[lit-ideas] Re: Sunday Poem
- From: david ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 18 Sep 2005 11:26:07 -0700
http://www.brazilsf.org/brazil_events_eng.htm
Troca Brazil.
Fantasies.
Mine are quite normal,
but, until now,
they've excluded Brazilians and chickens.
Why truck with either of these?
A play there on "troca"
which I'll explain.
Tuesday, I joined the usual fight on local tennis courts,
those mundane scrambles against the odds.
Did you read, in the New Yorker, the tale of that fellow on a raft
who, in very high seas,
saw a shark, high above him, scudding down a wave?
In Tuesday's play,
I felt quite that loony,
running down balls like a man possessed.
At night's end, I was the sweaty champion of a tale
that mattered just like snow in hell,
only briefly.
One evening on, here was another struggle,
this time with darts.
Matched against a guy who had entered tournaments,
I thwacked so accurately
in those smoky pub lists
that I might have won a Great Historic Victory,
had not all the available supply of fame been taken up
by Germans with towels.
Joke!
Then, get this,
I dreamed my wife and I must catch the train for Metz,
a place I've never been.
She said, "We don't need to see anyone,"
which,
those of you who are married
will understand to mean,
"We do."
I woke before I could discover who.
It was in an unusual state of mind thus
that I went to hear this Brazilian,
who, with little English,
was slated to explain,
neon-feathered chickens she's cooped in our college gallery.
She stood,
fiddled with the computer mouse,
launched into words,
loosely translated from the Portuguese.
She winged it, played by ear.
The result was by far the strangest talk I've heard in years.
Trained only in Philosophy, she called her art, "interventions."
She does not draw or paint or sculpt or do installations.
She sews a bit of fabric here and there, but mostly
she molds people,
sometimes animals,
"re-imagining things."
It started with a kind of toga.
which she asked folk to wear
on a walk with her along a strand.
Then she kept a cow on the beach.
Then she imagined, and had, a conversation-less meal.
Then her friends acted roles she found in a little-known painting of
a ball.
Then, in Wales, she added age to folk using makeup, which made her
International.
Back in Brazil, she paid folk to strip, lock their legs together and
scuttle like one big crab,
naked-ish,
through a biennial.
There was video of all this.
I drifted off on my own inner raft,
mindful not to snore.
I conjured fantasies.
I imported beasts into my backyard:
a few dwarf goats, a lemur, a tamarin,
some bandecoots in silk pajamas,
a panda,
a chinchilla,
Wallabies and wombats...
...draped Graces,
she's describing three naked Graces which,
she says, "reproduce exactly nothing,"
but when she adds just little clothing
of her own design...
...three wee duikers,
two coypu,
some anteaters,
a quinfidha,
a small lioness like Elsa,
Hippo of Antioch, of course,
two Carthaginian elephants, from a fire sale,
a small and ancient horse of the kind you see on walls of caves
until a whole herd of hints finally graze my pale.
Here at the hour's end she's describing how,
she adds neon feathers to fowl.
But not why.
Up bubbles my single singular thought:
forgetting, for a moment the law,
(acted, in this instance, by the shark,
razor-toothed sanction which keeps me back)
why don't I,
seizing this daftness by the scruff,
join in her DADA doings,
drape them say with a nice blood-red shade?
Why not in the wee hours of night,
intervene with swords,
re-imagine
at minimum
the blasted rooster?
Time for a rest.
I'm sure, if you give my surreal week any thought,
you'll discover a likeness to that famous warrior Wallace,
or, more probably,
to the dog,
Grommet.
David Ritchie
Portland, Oregon
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