Kit Kelen’s ‘The Sociology of Paradise’

from A Pocket Kit

First I came through a hoop of flesh.
I didn’t jump I swam.
There was an endless mud plain
and another storm coming.
Rain beat the rice shoots
green out of the soil.
Millions were huddled
round the still ether. 

The century dragged on.
I missed the boat, swam out
to the island. And the air
was still in the sun’s quarter
and the half a sky
where waves could have been.
The moon washed up
where the tide rusted into the sand. 

Cars came out of the twentieth century.
Coca Cola came ashore, washed
on the hard live shell of paradise.
A coconut fell out of nowhere
onto my child’s head. I didn’t stumble. 

There were stars and bars everywhere.
I could hear the west crackling through
looming shadows of bliss. 

Back-country hills were dense with trees,
dissidence, notches for climbing up.
And curled into a noose of straw
the disappeared hung, swaying
– invisible burden of paradise. I jumped
through a hoop of gold. I had
the ring of confidence then
and a flag the colour of mud. 

Helicopters filled up the sky.
At lunchtime and late in the afternoon
when the noise came
birds shifted forward in a straight line
black, palm to palm, fifty metres.
Then when they came back
there was nothing the wind could move.
Trees clung to a rock in the sea. 

On dry land I had a good steady job
in the flyspray factory. They paid me
in cigarettes so naturally I took up
smoking. The mist from the nozzle
formed up a halo
to martyr the very air.
You couldn’t call it a leak.
It was more like missile testing. 

Each day here proud of the fallen,
brainless slaughters to glory in.
The earth makes up a place for each.
The new rice sings from the earth.
The colour of the mud in our veins
is a flag billowing over a hoop
of bright gunmetal: the welcome mat.
I didn’t jump I swam.