True North
I
Here, to say North demands an extensive round
of travel, first in mind, toward the sweaty
gusset
of the tropics, volcanic soils, clarty and awash,
caked roads, flannelette leaves, tyres growing
in
circumference with every mile until jauntily stuck
fast; beyond the whole thermos flask of S.E.
Asia, India and the Himalayas, further on to the grey
slate plateaus of Afghanistan and the quarried
reefs of lapis lazuli, before you can entertain
the snoring sound North makes at the roof
of the
mouth, North as they would from Italy onward;
North, that is, Sweden, Denmark, Finland,
Norway,
Greenland; North, and finally the birch forests
rugging off to an indefinite horizon over
the tundra;
certainly not Larkin's North (O love blind as snow!)
but someplace else, the indeterminate hyperborean,
beyond the north wind to the Arctic Circle where
lights warble like organ music or taper piously,
the lights that lift the air into curtains and grottos and
the narwhal slowly materializes on the photo
plate
of ice, a ghost snapped in an extremely cold room,
and the merest breath a bold statement of
the living.
II
Here, to say North demands a dismissive outlook —
beautiful one day, a developer's dream-text
the next,
a mirage from Morocco, waves a curl of bank notes.
The Gold Coast, The Sunshine Coast, the Great
South Coast Conurbation, surf club to surf club,
running 2000 klm of coastal veranda from cane
fields to pineapple plantations, this land is your land,
this land is my land, from Cape York Peninsula
to the Great Australian Bight under one law white
as wave crests under a sky blue as a swimming
pool.
(First destroy the sea-grass, then destroy the dugong.)
North, traveler — to Bali or Jakarta,
Bangkok or
Rangoon, Malaysia and Singapore, to catch the Asian
Tiger by the tail does not require following
in
the steps of Buddha or Mohammed, only the shining
path of American Express and trade envoys
in
Hilton foyers; North, past French Colonial Villas and
trading posts from pre-second World War novels;
until your steps lead you to a first flurry of snowflakes
whirling like helicopter blades out of the
Kashmir
valley where avalanches and guns, not cow bells,
are the most ancient sounds to reach the western
ear.
III
Here, to say North still holds magnetically true as
the needle dips vertically to lodestone or
mountain;
the packet-boat three weeks overdue, bearers long
gone, the company agent, oleaginous, first
met on
the dockside (expansive now deferential) rarely
seen outside the custom-house or seedy rum
saloon;
North, but not to Nunavut, and word arrives from
the interior that the roads are near impassable,
the
telegraph wires are down, either through flood, or
activity of bandits moving up to limestone
country.
Yet our man from Mogadiscio was expected by
the next full moon, catching dry winds off
Oman;
we would recognize him by the yellow lateen sails
of a felucca off the headland at this appointed
hour.
Even the contrary winds that day fashioned an
insignia in the sky — for a moment out
of the North —
a drone of engines in close formation under cloud
should have been headed elsewhere (the theatre
of
war some leagues distant) for surely we would
have known, our orders changed at the slightest
hint?
As to the survey party, not so much as one word —
getting lost up Dolorous Gorge was
wholly absurd.
Previously published in Antipodes
