Colin's 'Market' has encouraged me to blow the dust off an old poem.
Ship Makkit at Patutiva
Tilleys hiss in moth-drummed globes of light,
kumaras glow like rubies, couched in grass,
drinking nuts piled, brown and plump as Polynesian breasts,
tapioca, starlight-white, snows on glossy leaves,
fists of bananas bunch on blushing mangoes;
char-grilled pink-cheeked job fish, rich seams of meat,
arrayed for viewing in the hot and yammering market,
close to the jetty and the sleek lagoon.
Black hands, swift as spiders, fiddle and arrange,
leaf-waft intrusive flies away from translucent melon
and oozing plush-fleshed paw-paws ranged over
treasured calico, chequered and chintzed and willow-pattern blue.
Eyes, bright with betel, dart and compare,
secret whispers fix prices, gossip, story and snigger
behind the black fans of hand and leaf
and always the anxious harking for a distant greeting
down the long warm slumbers of the night.
The swaying sentinel, palm-perched at perilous height,
tears the night with his shrill cry," Uminao! Hem cam noa ia!"
and a sigh settles on the market, like a lover on his bride.
The hush explodes with shouts and squeals of laughter
from the hip-wriggling pikininis' bare-arsed jig,
the wafting leaves increase in speed as the night bulges
with the whale-wide, low-watt-light-swung, rust-scabbed,
tyre-swagged, hulk of the Islands' ferry,
as it sidles and nudges, with lumbering grace,
into the web of a dripping puzzle of ropes to mate with the jetty.
Deep pound of diesel mutes to a murmur and the sides clank down.
Light and people spill into the mill of the market,
silhouettes till lamps define them and then they melt into the crowd.
Diesel, sweat, paraffin, trodden earth
and slapping sea thicken the air.
I sit with friends on long logs beside the stalls
apart from this press of strangers.
We chat and smoke the black tabac in resinous clouds;
spit betel-blood to roll in the dust,
watch the women at their toilsome tasks of trade,
play-act the constant hunt for change, parcel fish in banana leaf,
bundle the kasava and nali nuts, sift and twist the powdered shell.
The bull-blare of horn informs
and the Uminoa departs.
We watch her leave, thinning down the moon -path, fading, gone,
then fold the fragments, shake and close the cloths with loving care,
scold heedless, past-it pikininis with sharp words and long sticks.
Lamps disperse, float up the hill and will-o-the wisp along the shore;
canoes down-doppler in fast farewells;
cash is counted, tucked and put to hoard.
All over the village lights burn a while, then dowse,
one last raucous peal of laughter, a dog responds with indignation,
then, slowly, silence and the moon folds Patutiva into sleep.
Arthur W Seeley
Notes. Patutiva is a stopping place for the inter -island ferry of the
Solomon Islands.
Ship makkit is a weekly market held to catch the passing trade of the Ferry
which always arrives at night.
Uminao is the name of the old ship that is the ferry.The name might
translate as 'All of us'
'Uminao hem cam nao ia ' is Pidjin for 'The Uminao is here!'
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