Vanuatu

Havana Harbour Heads

still shadows looming silently
before heavens like mango flesh

grave guardians of water
in phosphorescent swoon;
lambent fires by moonlight
betray the living on deathly islands

and everywhere yellow flowers

are spirited across the sea;
from the galley I hear Beethoven’s Fifth
and on bags of furled sails
fall exhaustedly asleep.

…

only playful Flying Fish
accompany me at the helm;
half a mile of calm
blue skirted by outcropped Volcanoes
kissing clouds; half a mile down
black, and Epi yawning worlds beyond
the bow, no larger now than at first light;

three sails, no wind, and a dormant engine
ready to sing failure-songs; the others gone
back under (to let a novice steer unencumbered,
to give he and Velella an intimate moment or two)

place where fish fly!
Not even exhaust fumes ground them

another blue precipice quakes, the hull
cries foamy tears; glinting water holds
a million sunlit mirrors to pale winter skin;

lure jiggling in arrears
hooks a Sailfish bigger than I – impossible
to steer now; behold her crest, her spear
and her sparking air of myth,
cut the lurching line.

…

Celestial tribute! Submarine
flashes; plankton are spawning;
wave an oar to transform blackness –
slick of an underworld alight;

village dogs guffaw near pigs pens
somewhere in the hiding mass
behind us, backlit steeples hover
like queer ideals on palm tree plinths;
yelp, squeal, smell and sight
of spot fires – little Europes growing piecemeal
in sticky forests tinted silver
by the alchemic sea;

brown film of budding reef!
And portside an awesome glow
burns amongst glittering storm clouds;

reflected ire of Ambrym’s volcano
presides over the night;
altar of this great hall of miracles

…

For hours I snorkeled in the bathwater
Pacific – and a rock lobster clipped my toe;
clownfish in the rushes, model bays unknown
by whitefellas windblown – reef shelves
plummeting like cliff tops, and dazedly
Xan kept the inflatable in-tow;

moon risen early, sunset lost in ash clouds;
ruby in a great wave, and spears of light
tentacles of a huge hidden halo;

no intellect for silence
no courage for calm;
what metaphysics needed
to stand under torrents of beauty?

and at five o’clock a bell tolls on Lamen;
time to read the Psalms;
sight the locals lurching homeward on
sails of coconut palm;

afloat on my sun burnt back,
ears seashell-echoed
in the bathwater Pacific I feel
a synthesis of all things;
sunset metamorphosing
each time I open my eyes to that riddle
and insoluble as flesh or bone
there is nothing to do but cry

…

showers are expendable
(my skin is a sunlight snare)

...

the globe is a shoal of green
reef fish
moving ceaselessly as one-
and behind every hen
a tail of ragged chicks swishes
in a courtyard of dead coral
the dogs skulk amongst;

days idle by on Vanuatu time
green gardens erected like shrines
to mother, and jungle rats hungry
for pineapple piss
from the branches of starlit trees
onto kava men reaping their wine;

the village is a place of black
magic,
bestriding its spirit bay-
and embodied in every sea snake
touched only by ghosts and fools
lives the souls of all departed chiefs

…

Patience is an idea unknown to us;
to choose patience unknown to them
whose mother they kiss
on every return to terra firma
whose mothers is ours; we
with scant patience blown in like white dust

…

children fishing in shallows
overhung by creepers
at sunset in a seven island bay,

the restful water pinkish
volcanoes vapour-laden
at anchor in the twilight of the day;

surf roaring from over
the narrow coral shoulder
in total darkness break the eastern waves;

inconceivable colours
none found in a pastel,
and piercing squeals of wild pigs in the fray

…

no man is an island, but, like islands,

man creates his own weather;

blue skies in the bay centre
but over each body a new cloud
new winds, new haze -
posts of a giant sapphire bed
rising from this water-plain;
ashen gods ruling by kastom law;

swathes of men languish ashore, others fish
the reefs when the tide comes -
boat-riders, builders, sorcerers, fire-lighters
each with the skeleton of his own climate;

bird-callers, herdsman, Catholics,
heathens being fanned by the air
of flapping Bibles;

no women have awoken yet
(at least it looks that way from here)
no women except Helane
writing poems in the saloon;
all women are islands
men clamber to live on and worship

…

the waters are liquid crystal
washed afar
of melted grottos
dispassionately appearing
mainly in postcards, but
under and around us now
sunlit and reef-mottled;

four meters all of a thumbnail
to the seabed
flared milky by turtles
closeness and distance to Audrey
a parallel illusion
but never more pointed as when
benign seas are wept hurtful

…

my inner silence structured by
the long absence of her voice
on cold quiet mornings -
my disaffection her hatchling
like the Pele tide the moon’s;

painful memories echo
painful experience,
unbearable memories echo
joy;

I forget the smell of her hair;
what other course than 

to travel half the earth and return
not with a lock but with her?

…

fewer plantation palms
turn the jungle to verdant hills;
pissing off the bow at anchor
I sight the teeming envelope
and shiver – what overgrowth
what quiet

naked and the night wind
laps on rocky beaches, water ruffled;
two days from the fullest moon
the world alight with whiteness
and ire – when all of us
are savage

so on the deck I sit
under my last Vanuatu stars;
pondering the usual questions
with crossed legs and salt-crusted hair
a scream builds; I check myself
and sigh

somewhere a motor boat
steals out to fish or find kava;
man’s first incursion in an hour
reminds me just how tired I am
how tired; how tired of him
how tired

...