The Young Men

The FB has a young friend she cares deeply for, H. Their families are friends, but in the past year, they formed a friendship based on each other rather than on familial obligation. H is in his 20s, incredibly bright, funny, an astounding mimic, and possessed of an emotional depth that is touching and rare.

(When she is with him, the FB is reminded of her own youth and she wonders if, when she was H's age, she was capable of recognizing these qualities in a man, or if she was too blinded by her own issues regarding self, identity, and the confusing morass of emotions and depression that she labored in for many years.)

H came to town the other day and stayed with his friend R. They and the FB got together for drinks on a warm-ish, breezy Paris night where every single person in town was hanging out on the Canal St. Martin. They went to two different bars, one mellow, one noisy, then ended up at the FB's place for a bottle of wine and some vintage Italian music (H shares the FB's predilection for Italian pop music of the 60s, and Eduardo Vianello was on the playlist). At one point, the conversation turned to Michael Ondaatje, and H mentioned a favorite poem, "The Cinnamon Peeler." He found it online and read it outloud:

The Cinnamon Peeler

If I were a cinnamon peeler I would ride your bed And leave the yellow bark dust On your pillow. Your breasts and shoulders would reek You could never walk through markets without the profession of my fingers floating over you. The blind would stumble certain of whom they approached though you might bathe under rain gutters, monsoon. Here on the upper thigh at this smooth pasture neighbour to your hair or the crease that cuts your back. This ankle. You will be known among strangers as the cinnamon peeler's wife. I could hardly glance at you before marriage never touch you --your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers. I buried my hands in saffron, disguised them over smoking tar, helped the honey gatherers... When we swam once I touched you in the water and our bodies remained free, you could hold me and be blind of smell. you climbed the bank and said this is how you touch other women the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter. And you searched your arms for the missing perfume and knew what good is it to be the lime burner's daughter left with no trace as if not spoken to in the act of love as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar. You touched your belly to my hands in the dry air and said I am the cinnamon Peeler's wife. Smell me.

The FB, entranced by the poem and by H reading it aloud, suggested that they each find and read a favorite poem. The FB chose "A Blessing," by James Wright:

A Blessing 

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more, they begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.


R, H's friend, chose a poem by Ted Hughes from "Birthday Letters."

Fate Playing

Because the message somehow met a goblin,

Because precedents tripped your expectations,

Because your London was still a kaleidoscope

Of names and places any jolt could scramble,

You waited mistaken. The bus from the North

Came in and emptied and I was not on it.

No matter how much you insisted

And begged the driver, probably with tears,

To produce me or to remember seeing me

Just miss getting on. I was not on it.

Eight in the evening and I was lost and at large

Somewhere in England. You restrained

Your confident inspiration

And did not dash out into the traffic

Milling around Victoria, utterly certain

Of bumping into me where I would have to be walking.

I was not walking anywhere. I was sitting

Unperturbed, in my seat on the train

Rocking towards Kings Cross. Somebody,

Calmer than you, had a suggestion. So,

When I got off the train, expecting to find you

Somewhere down at the root of the platform,

I saw that surge and agitation, a figure

Breasting the flow of released passengers,

Then your molten face, your molten eyes

And your exclamations, your flinging arms

Your scattering tears

As if I had come back from the dead

Against every possibility, against

Every negative but your own prayer

To your own Gods. There I knew what it was

To be a miracle. And behind you

Your jolly taxi-driver, laughing, like a small god,

To see an American girl being so American,

And to see your frenzied chariot-ride –

Sobbing and goading him, and pleading with him

To make happen what you needed to happen-

Succeed so completely, thanks to him.

Well, it was a wonder

That my train was not earlier, even much earlier,

That it pulled in, late, the very moment

You irrupted onto the platform. It was

Natural and miraculous and an omen

Confirming everything

You wanted confirmed. So your huge despair,

Your cross-London panic dash

And now your triumph, splashed over me,

Like love forty-nine times magnified,

Like the first thunder cloudburst engulfing

The drought in August

When the whole cracked earth seems to quake

And every leaf trembles

And everything holds up its arms weeping.

The three of them stayed up late, talking, listening to music. When they left, the FB thought about the sweetness of sharing poems and how almost unbearably moving it was to hear beloved poetry read aloud.


Later, the next morning, she remembered a poem by a friend of hers, Beth Woodcome:

Fiction

 

We all go untouched, is a lie.

We think in heavy thoughts, is a lie,

is a bed, is a thing we all need in the heat.

Somewhere the centuries

are building up like a brothel queue.

No better time to tilt your head back.

We all know how, is a lie.

The bed, like a gorge, is a lie.

I want to say it's me, where you are,

what you're suffering with your hands, is too.