The Concessions

This stunning poem reminds me of home. Gee, I wonder why!


The Concessions -- by Michael Ondaatje

i.

Wawanosh.
In the corn of night
surrounded by the dusty dark green
hot insects and moon
a star coat.

We are new and ancient here
talking through midnight's
tired arms,
letting go the newness.
I am home.
Old farmhouse, a defunct red truck
under the trees
conversation all evening
and I have nothing more to say
but this is a magic night.
Our bodies betray us, long for sleep.
Still - talk about the bear, the cause
of theatre, the first time we all met.

A yellow light falls onto the sink
and our arms lean forward
towards Elmira coffee cake.
Hello again, after Pacific months,
and I brought you a seed I never gave you
and I brought you stories and a peace I want
to give, but it is both of you
who bring comfort and friendship.

All night we were at this table.
Tableau of faint light,
fragment of Ontario.
We would be plotting revolution in the 1830's.
And outside the same heat, old coat of stars,
the released lung of the country, and
great Ontario night beans growing
towards Goderich.
Lone houses
betrayed by poplar
reached only by long arms
of Wawanosh concessions,
the crow of night.

Tomorrow
will be all highway
till I get home.
Go to bed, exhausted and alone.
Go to bed with each others' minds.
I do not know what to say
about this kind of love
but I refuse to lose it.

ii.
By the outhouse and red truck
I look up towards a lit window
which seeps a yellow road into trees.
To end in the warm
glove of a maple!
A bear.
Welcome Shakespeare, Sarah Bernhardt,
someone is starting a new story.
Someone is dancing new on this
terrific ancient earth, claiming this
for mute ancestors
and their language of hands.
The entertainers
who allow themselves long evenings
while others sleep.
The suspicious work of the community.

The town of Molesworth
which once housed a dancing cow
articulated us. As did the director
from Atwood, the fiddler from Listowel,
and the actress from Fergus, the writer from Wingham,
the mystic from Millbank.
These country hearts, a county conspiracy.
Their determined self-portraits
where alone one picks
up the pencil, begins with nothing
but these blank pages.
Let me tell you, I love them more and more
-- all their night silences, their ignored dream.

In daylight the car hums. Bluevale Seaforth
Newry Holmesville.
The deer and flamingos, another mythology,
grace every tenth house.
This is not your home
but you are home.
Geraniums
in a tractor tire, horse weathervanes.
Moon over the Maitland River...

And so that yellow light
man or woman working inside
aware of the cricket night
cricket cricket... cicada? he writes, she says
to no one but the page
black hallways behind him
and ahead the windowscreen and then
the yard of yellow highway into maple
which his mind can walk out on
and dream a story
for his friends, the community

as someone once imagined
a dancing cow, a giant cheese.
The dream made name.
The gestures of the barroom
made dictionary.

iii.

When the four piece band sat stony in the Blyth Hotel
and played Maple Sugar, the bar got up to dance.
My shoulder banging against the women's room
to avoid flying drunk feet in their boots
that brought the cowshit in. And the bullshit
came too, through the beer and smoke.

This lady on the electric piano, the two fiddlers
and guitarist, the actors from across the street
stepping up to sing, receive stormy ovations.
The tv green and orange above us
recording grade B Hollywood, flamingo art.
And something is happening here.
Town and actors exchanging clothes.
The mechanic holds his harmonica
professionally against the mike
piercing out 'Have you ever been lonely
have you ever been blue,'
and, as the man from Lobo says,
Fuck the Renaissance
- just get me a beer.

iv.

So this midnight choir.

At 2 a.m. everyone is thrown out
and spreads onto the empty streets.
Unseen, as we step into cars,
are the bear and hawk,
who generate us.
And from the unseen sky
the crow watches
traffic light up Highway 4
then turn into unpaved
yellow concession roads.

The car bounces on a grass path
between tall corn and stops.

Light from the open car
reveals the yard.
And, as if painted onto the night,
is the yellow window
where someone, holding a mirror
is drawing a picture of herself.