I like the contrast between the violence of the market and the prim urbanity
of the visitor. Poor man. All he wants is some new potatoes. You can hear
him wiping his manicured nails clean with every 'unprocessed' polysyllable,
'for instance'.

Instead he gets hit with life in the raw - literally. And doesn't even get
any potatoes.

I love the last line, 'go home to my own barbarities'.

A subtle reminder that civilisation is, as Freud would have it, but a thin
veneer.

Terri )O(



-----Original Message-----
From: The Pennine Poetry Works [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
Behalf Of Colin dewar
Sent: 17 February 2003 18:49
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: newsub/market


Market Place,  Wuhan.

I have only come for some new potatoes,
though any excuse will do
to stroll through the market,
with its tapestry of flesh and earthy veg-
stalls selling any food you could imagine,
dog meat for instance or woodland fungi,
all of it unprocessed.
You get your hands dirty
if you want chicken.
Buying it is just the beginning.
Then you must kill it and pluck it and gut it.
Back home when you buy it,
the work is half done.

I walk slowly,
careful  where I place my feet,
watch vendors hot-faced, yelling
as if they must be paid in blood.
They have worked long in all weather,
their skin purple-brown.
I don't want to worry them
when I come to haggle for half an hour.

I linger by fish
that I don't know by name,
guess at where they lived,
if sediment or surface
from shapes of mouth and fin.
However they lived all
will be eaten.
For now they survive in basins,
less water than fish.

I bought one once, a toothless type
with a head like a rock,
almost broke my hand knocking it out,
was told
it would have died out of water.
I recognise eels.
Their heads are impaled on nails
and their bodies stripped clean.

Fifteen frogs flop together
in a net bag, used for oranges at home,
gather dust on sweating skin.
Someone buys a bag and uses his shoe as a club
to beat them to death.
A pig squeals from a corner
that I don't go into.
Then a rat drops when a box is moved,
and dodges among the tomatoes.

I am distracted by a fight in the vegetables.
Half an hour of bickering over prices
has led to a fracas,
a couple of women with such abuse
I don't have to know their speech.
A ragged leek whips the offending cheek
and then potatoes are thrown in turn,
the ones I had wanted to buy.
I will shop here for another half year,
go home to my own barbarities.

Wuhan. P.R.C.    91/92
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