Graham High: LOST CITY

a trowel probes
the stones of the lost city—
and then the sun

Something Freudian about it, this digging up the past. As I watch the excavator at his work I am reminded that archaeologist and psychologist were both careers I was attracted to in my youth. This man painstakingly sweeping a small amount of dust with a very small paint brush is probably my age. Has he done this all his life?

digging in the sun
the archaeologist
peels layers of skin

I realise that I’ve lost the urge to conserve and record. I no longer even keep a journal – perhaps I’m too busy. History is for the young. Maybe the past can only be taken on by those having a sense of new beginning? When history has slowly absorbed you into itself the sheer weight of the past can only be stultifying.

pinned to the earth face
the neat hand-writing of the
archaeologist

He pauses to take a photograph. Then he unpacks a sketch pad and pencils. This I can relate to: this fixing of his find in the momentary circumstances of the day; the particular configuration; the tones and shadows. This, if anything, is what I’ll take away, this concrete image of a place and time. The sheer beauty of it, held in the singular changing light. A fleeting impression broken now by a few sudden heat-spots.

he draws the ruin
of two thousand years—
rain on his sketch

I savour the scent of the warm droplets on dust, embrace the present and move on.

by Graham High

Blackheath, West Midlands, England

Graham High: FAN BLADES

chanting from the mosque—

the hotel ceiling fan
rocks in its socket

It is mid-day and sweltering. Even in Sri Lanka it is seldom this hot. I am lying on my back watching the ceiling fan. My mind drifts, begins to churn. As I get sucked into the creaking blur of blades a random memory stabilises the swell, like a kind of ballast. It is an image from the film ‘Apocalypse Now’. I remember the opening shots: helicopter rotor blades cross cut with a ceiling fan. There is the sound of distant gunfire.

A mosquito disturbs my reverie. I get up and walk to the window. The silver river flanked by paddy fields that I watched last night as I waited for fruit bats is now ablaze with sunlight. The palms and ferns between the earthen houses are of the most vivid green. But now there is something else. A patch of blackness amongst all that light. There has been a disturbance over night. Some Moslem youths have beaten up a Sinhalese lad. It seems the boy died this morning and now some Sinhalese are taking their revenge.

a Muslim store aflame—
black smoke is framing
the Bodhi tree.

I am overwhelmed by the beauty of this country. Its lush greenness, its profusion of birds and creatures, it’s blithe and compassionate people. That paradise should be the setting for such racial tensions and civil disorders disturbs me. I can’t make the images fit. It is as if perverted pathways are being laid down in my brain.

I go to the writing table as if I had something to say, something to write down, but I need a kind of comfort that a pencil cannot give.
.

fan blades stir the air—
soft fringe of the table cloth
strokes my other hand

I flop back on the bed and yield to the fan blade’s homogenising blur.

There is the sound of distant gunfire.

I swat the mosquito—
my hand spotted
with my own blood
.

[1] The Bodhi tree is the tree under which the Buddha, Siddhartha, found enlightenment. All Bodhi trees, which are found in most Buddhist temples, are held to be derived from this original tree.

by Graham High
Blackheath, West Midlands, England

Graham High: LODGE

dark teak and whitewash
in the silent jungle lodge—
one bright blue suitcase

When does it really hit home, that moment of feeling wholly, undeniably foreign in a strange and unknown land? Not at the first touchdown of the aircraft; nor upon leaving the airport lounge. Other tourists, your fellow travellers, cocoon these first impressions in a spun shell of familiar features, understood speech, shared gestures and communal excitement.

Even when being collected by your transfer driver in the purple two-stroke taxi, you are greeted by someone who, though undeniably of a different culture and race, meets you on your own terms, shyly speaking your own language.

Then, at the colonial hotel, you are welcomed, shown to your room, your suitcase waiting for you in the corner having mysteriously arrived from the lobby by another route. The door closes and suddenly you are alone, out of the cocoon. A strange creature among strangeness. As you sit on the bed that is not quite your bed, you anticipate the night that you have yet to live through.

through the rattan chair
an electric fan shreds the breeze—
hum of the jungle

Restless, you feel you need to make a change of place. You move to the balcony and absorb the late sun, the vivid, singular viewpoint. And you too are the viewpoint. Highly visible. Irradiant with sudden self-consciousness. You are like a glow-worm unexpectedly revealed on a turned leaf. You are hardly aware of the dark hand that discretely sets down the courtesy drink before you. You are not the same you. This is not the same sun.

caught in the bottle
green sunlight pours slowly
into the glass

Gradually you feel more comfortable. A kind of nostalgia overcomes the need to stay sharp. The flurry of new images, the sounds and smells, find a place to settle inside you to form a surface, a continuum that blends the old familiar with the new unknown.

dreaming of home
the postcards blow over
the balustrade

You move back inside. After a while you accept yourself. It feels like you really live here. Maybe you’ve always lived here. But it still feels strange. You throw yourself on the bed and read the book you brought with you: something to bridge the hiatus; a link to a re-play of the recent past. You try to find something in your memories of where you’ve come from that is as vivid as the brightness of these green leaves. And for the moment you are lost in your own story.

last page of the book—
a trace of mosquito spray
where my thumb has been

.

by Graham High
Blackheath, West Midlands, England