GANESH IN THE HOUSE
from “Brown
Water: Poems from Paradise”
In my father’s house
there are many mansions
just as in my village
there are many poor houses
with mansions between them—
mansions with gables and finials
and small shiny servants
kneeling by elephants,
horses, buffalo-carts and palanquins,
peacocks unfolding their fans as the girls
with big breasts fall silent, and smiling
bow brightly uncovered like bells
as they bear at the banquet
on small silver trays
tiny thimbles of whisky and water—
water-born courtyards of perfume
and smoky inhalations,
sacred waxed alcoves curtained off
with tall scented cushions
in damask and rice-green velvet,
melon-shaped with vast muslin oceans
filled out on the spirit-born breeze
like a lover, like a mother,
like a mouse—
and all of them quiet and assembled
for the rare private blink
of the god in the house,
huge, whale-still, like Herod but holy
with those wide-awake eyes and garish
like a mountain in a recess—
the gargantuan trunk right there,
gob-smacked, stuck right in your face—
yikes, the size of him!
So swing low, O God of Bright Presence!
Sri Power, swing O Prince of Pubescence!
O Bounteous, O Fat One!—
sweet the
spectacular pink Substance,
the perfect round belly, wide hips,
the radiant pure mind and broad sceptre—
oh the long, spangled prepuce,
the swooning, the monolith pout
with the make-up, the swaying unseemly
back and forth on one massive leg—
oh the bells on the ankle, the tinkling,
the
trampling in time with the snout!
O Ganesh, to garnish life’s platter
with the wink of good fortune—
O Shiva, to shiver & lather us more—
O Brahma, to make it all happen,
what we want
more than anything
that happens to the gods
everyday in these mansions
up there on the humungous dwarf leg,
garlanded, stage-struck & beribboned
with incense and candles—
any morning at 8
with a glass of cool water,
and an orange on a blue plastic plate,
swaying in the mansion, up on one leg—
any morning in my father’s house,
oh heavenly mansion for the passionate,
ponderoso and intelligent,
girly-sweet god of Siam!
____________________
A large proportion of Thai
religious beliefs and practices are Hindu rather than Buddhist in
origin. This is nowhere clearer than in the spirit houses
that are so important to every Thai family and business, including
our own. Small but elaborate, these miniature palaces often contain
a Shiva figure in the innermost courtyard along with Ganesha,
the much-loved elephant-headed god. Ritual gifts of food, water,
flowers and incense are offered up at these shrines everyday all
over the country, and if a prayer is answered, the supplicant leaves
in return a tiny ceramic elephant, horse, dancing girl, or some
other useful object as a gift for the deity who has obliged.
Our cook spends the first 30 minutes of each day
preparing food and ritual offerings for our spirit houses, and at
the end of each day carefully gathers together what's left to make a
feast for our chickens and dogs.
MONSOON WATER
from “Brown Water: Poems from Paradise”
The gracious draught in the cleft shell,
the cool reprieve,
support, belief
dipped from an old clay pot
held out at noon
with torn hands
under the corrugate,
that's pure celestial
water—
though every western winner knows
the village well is
far more controversial,
the undressed orchid's
purple parts and linen
more dramatically confessed
and
soapy moss around the edges
positively pubic.
I wai.
I drink the lot.
Even the sweaty jewels of last night's
frog-storm chorus
cling
to the moist hope
that living
may be worth
the
heart-breaking thirst
that's sure enough
to follow!
published in
RUNES: A Review of Poetry (2004)
___________________
A cool drink of water is offered to the
visitor at every Thai portal and doorway, however exalted or
humble it may be. The wai
is the quintessential Thai greeting in which the palms are
placed together at chin level, fingertips pointing upward.
The gesture denotes respect, gratitude and prayer.
The only universal human gesture close to it is
the hands raised high up over the head with the palms wide apart,
indicating surrender.
"Homprang Healing," a watercolor
by
Inga Schmalz, Baan Hom Samunphrai, March 30th, 2009
BIO
CHRISTOPHER WOODMAN
realised at fifty that he was still an amateur at everything he did
and set out to try to master just one thing before it was too late.
He published his first poem at 52, and now seventeen years later has
appeared, or is just about to appear, in journals as fine and
diverse as The Atlanta Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, The
Chariton Review, The Cumberland Poetry Review, Exquisite
Corpse, The Kenyon Review, Phase and Cycle,
Runes, and Visions International. A graduate of
Columbia, Yale and Cambridge Universities, he has taught, built
houses, and sailed boats all over the world but is only now getting
to grips with his real vocation. He lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand,
and says he's never done anything so hard in his life!
Brown Water: Poems from Paradise
is a work in progress attempting to create poetry that anyone can
understand about subjects that nobody understands. In addition
Christopher Woodman has completed two other very different books of
poetry, Galileo's Secret and
Gold Leaf on the Waters!--both of which are busy looking for
publishers.
Christopher Woodman says of himself: I've never been
workshopped, you see--they weren't invented until I was over
forty. That means my poetry almost certainly lacks the multi-layered
elliptical density that the new, highly trained critical mind needs
to keep itself fully engaged while teaching it. But I'm a
writer, not a teacher, and I don't read like a teacher either, not
in real life, so I wouldn't know where to start. Indeed you have to
read me as I am, a kind of new old-world wheel-wright. I've
reinvented it, so to speak, spokes, grease and all, and for me that
means it has to turn, and it has to go somewhere.
A poem's
a service thing for me, man's
most accomplished
tool--older
even than the axe, and
sharper! It's fire, it's water--it's what makes life wake up and
know it's alive, and good, and truly worth dying for!
"He Mistakes Her Kingdom for a Horse," a poem by Christopher
Woodman in the Fall issue of The Beloit Poetry Journal, has
just been nominated for the 2010 Pushcart Prize.
(see below)
Four
very different poems from over the years:
Leadline
Sound out the falling fathoms,
sing as the markers fold back
and slip each beneath the surface
until the last strip stops short,
catches its breath as it
spreads
its wings and flutters thanks.
Sprig of green, you mark
the summit of my need that rises
gabled from the latest depths.
You signal just how high a man
must roll his trousers up
to
walk home across the flood,
or how to stay put even when the
humped tide hangs over the edge
like water hanging in a glass—
while far below your cupped lead
charged with tallow gently lifts
whatever stain such limits hold,
a trace of flecked shell, or sand,
or mud settling back behind,
or just
nothing signifying rock.
And all the while the thankless keel,
poised between your greased
root
and the empyrean
strokes its
blind shadow
on the bar.
published in The
Cumberland Poetry Review (1997)
Daedalus Brief
If you jump high enough to know
exactly how to stay afloat
if you suspend your breath
just at the point the next begins
and spread your shoulders
gently out like this and this
feeling each porous blade
expand with gently harnessed air
your altitude a little lower than
the height which makes you think
but higher than the space below
while having nowhere else to go
then you, my son, will never have
to stretch for some new stunt to please
or words to pray
or
be.
published in Fire Readings, Shakespeare & Co., (Paris
1992)
He mistakes her kingdom for a horse
He heard horses
when she meant writing,
he heard sweat,
the creamy lather where
the taut skin
works against the leather.
He heard writing
when she meant
riding her journal,
the words a broad back
beneath her, pressed
up and caught between
her long phrases and the
need to be heard by him,
the naked verb,
the taut joy ridden
but prepositional,
the taut thorn,
a word, a horse
working between them.
published in The Beloit Poetry Journal (Fall 2009)
Nominated for the 2010 Pushcart Prize: the Best of the Small
Presses
Like Every Angel Born
Your old lover comes to you
when your face is to the wall.
That's why he’s damp and mossy,
that's why his eyes are sharp
like mice
venturing out just after all the noise
has died down
in the country kitchen.
His hips are narrow like the cellar
stairs
he eases himself down slowly, step by step—
his German
shepherd's crippled grace
is eager to please with its dark slouch
even as it frightens the children
dreaming like lanterns on
your lawn.
He scents your confusion in the doorway—
even when you’re hiding
your smile,
even when you’re keeping your hands
securely
occupied with not having
anything to do once you’re in bed.
He can smell your breasts cascading quietly
under the fresh
sheets like waterfalls—
their odor is round like wading pools
that reflect last
summer's softest clouds,
and the picnics too, with the white
doves
tumbling at the back of the orchard.
You roll over and straighten out
your legs—your hips are ramparts,
your moat is filled with
water.
He turns away, back to work as usual
with all his hands under the
hapless car.
You see only his Reeboks in the grass
sticking
out irreverently beneath you.
You hear the clink of his tools,
his breathing, the wires and filters
unraveling your secrets in
his fingers.
The nuts and bolts are all that matters
when it's coming apart in
his hands.
You phone him up in the silence
to be sure he's still there
under the jacked-up wreck.
You ask him if he loves you.
He
says he's not too sure
but it's coming apart
like it should.
Such greasy reticence leaves footprints
all over your freshly
washed resolve—
down on your hands and knees again
you’re
washing the stains in widening arcs.
Like wings greening in the
battered snow
the strokes show how to wipe clean
a sweaty
heart bent upon its own
ungraciously divine descent,
how to
release the grime at last,
to groom like every angel born.
published in The Chariton Review (1994)
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