He leads us to our village destination through the stubble of forests stolen by lumber bandits, past bamboo conduits spilling water down hills to women in silver and coral necklaces who weave on backstrap looms while men tend corn and poppies. His terminus is twenty pipes a night bought with our fees. Rising in his beautiful balloon of opium above his village, he is transformed into an East-West Don Juan pursued by local maidens and Swedish backpackers; into a Jungle Natty Bumppo, tamer of trumpeting elephants long dead as these denuded hills, and as he flatters us older women, puts flowers in our hair, he leches not for our pale wrinkles but for flashlights, watches, jackknives. On his morning pipe-dazed path out of the home odor of woodsmoke, through the melting shapes of mist among the stumpy ghosts of jungle, he knows the culture with the most things wins. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...CHAMBER MUSIC: 30 by JAMES JOYCE READ THE SIGNS by CLARENCE MAJOR THE SECRET by KATHERINE MANSFIELD CONTRA MORTEM: THE BEING by HAYDEN CARRUTH LET ME NOT HATE by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON TO MARY CHURCH TERRELL - LECTURER by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON |