Crusoe in
England
A new volcano has erupted,
the papers say, and last week I was
reading
where some ship saw an island being
born:
at first a breath of steam, ten miles
away;
and then a black fleck—basalt, probably—
rose in the mate’s binoculars
and caught on the horizon like a fly.
They named it. But my poor old island’s
still
un-rediscovered, un-renamable.
None of the books has ever got it right.
Well, I had fifty-two
miserable, small volcanoes I could
climb
with a few slithery strides—
volcanoes dead as ash heaps.
I used to sit on the edge of the highest
one
and count the others standing up,
naked and leaden, with their heads blown
off.
I’d think that if they were the
size
I thought volcanoes should be, then I
had
become a giant;
and if I had become a giant,
I couldn’t bear to think what
size
the goats and turtles were,
or the gulls, or the overlapping
rollers
—a glittering hexagon of
rollers
closing and closing in, but never
quite,
glittering and glittering, though the
sky
was mostly overcast.
My island seemed to be
a sort of cloud-dump. All the
hemisphere’s
left-over clouds arrived and hung
above the craters—their parched
throats
were hot to touch.
Was that why it rained so much?
And why sometimes the whole place
hissed?
The turtles lumbered by,
high-domed,
hissing like teakettles.
(And I’d have given years, or taken a
few,
for any sort of kettle, of course.)
The folds of lava, running out to sea,
would hiss. I’d turn. And then they’d
prove
to be more turtles.
The beaches were all lava,
variegated,
black, red, and white, and gray;
the marbled colors made a fine
display.
And I had waterspouts. Oh,
half a dozen at a time, far out,
they’d come and go, advancing and
retreating,
their heads in cloud, their feet in
moving patches
of scuffed-up white.
Glass chimneys, flexible,
attenuated,
sacerdotal beings of glass ... I
watched
the water spiral up in them like
smoke.
Beautiful, yes, but not much company.
I often gave way to self-pity.
“Do I deserve this? I suppose I must.
I wouldn’t be here otherwise. Was
there
a moment when I actually chose this?
I don’t remember, but there could have
been.”
What’s wrong about self-pity, anyway?
With my legs dangling down
familiarly
over a crater’s edge, I told myself
“Pity should begin at home.” So the
more
pity I felt, the more I felt at home.
The sun set in the sea; the same odd
sun
rose from the sea,
and there was one of it and one of
me.
The island had one kind of
everything:
one tree snail, a bright violet-blue
with a thin shell, crept over
everything,
over the one variety of tree,
a sooty, scrub affair.
Snail shells lay under these in
drifts
and, at a distance,
you’d swear that they were beds of
irises.
There was one kind of berry, a dark
red.
I tried it, one by one, and hours
apart.
Sub-acid, and not bad, no ill
effects;
and so I made home-brew. I’d
drink
the awful, fizzy, stinging stuff
that went straight to my head
and play my home-made flute
(I think it had the weirdest scale on
earth)
and, dizzy, whoop and dance among the
goats.
Home-made, home-made! But aren’t we
all?
I felt a deep affection for
the smallest of my island
industries.
No, not exactly, since the smallest
was
a miserable philosophy.
Because I didn’t know enough.
Why didn’t I know enough of
something?
Greek drama or astronomy? The
books
I’d read were full of blanks;
the poems—well, I tried
reciting to my iris-beds,
“They flash upon that inward eye,
which is the bliss ...” The bliss of
what?
One of the first things that I did
when I got back was look it up.
The island smelled of goat and
guano.
The goats were white, so were the
gulls,
and both too tame, or else they
thought
I was a goat, too, or a gull.
Baa, baa, baa and shriek, shriek,
shriek,
baa ... shriek ... baa ... I still can’t shake
them from my ears; they’re hurting now.
The questioning shrieks, the equivocal
replies
over a ground of hissing rain
and hissing, ambulating turtles
got on my nerves.
When all the gulls flew up at once, they
sounded
like a big tree in a strong wind, its
leaves.
I’d shut my eyes and think about a
tree,
an oak, say, with real shade,
somewhere.
I’d heard of cattle getting island-sick.
I thought the goats were.
One billy-goat would stand on the
volcano
I’d christened Mont d’Espoir or Mount Despair
(I’d time enough to play with
names),
and bleat and bleat, and sniff the
air.
I’d grab his beard and look at
him.
His pupils, horizontal, narrowed up
and expressed nothing, or a little
malice.
I got so tired of the very
colors!
One day I dyed a baby goat bright
red
with my red berries, just to
see
something a little different.
And then his mother wouldn’t recognize
him.
Dreams were the worst. Of course I
dreamed of food
and love, but they were pleasant rather
than otherwise. But then I’d dream of
things
like slitting a baby’s throat, mistaking
it
for a baby goat. I’d have
nightmares of other islands
stretching away from mine,
infinities
of islands, islands spawning
islands,
like frogs’ eggs turning into
polliwogs
of islands, knowing that I had to
live
on each and every one,
eventually,
for ages, registering their
flora,
their fauna, their geography.
Just when I thought I couldn’t stand
it
another minute longer, Friday
came.
(Accounts of that have everything all
wrong.)
Friday was nice.
Friday was nice, and we were
friends.
If only he had been a woman!
I wanted to propagate my
kind,
and so did he, I think, poor boy.
He’d pet the baby goats sometimes,
and race with them, or carry one
around.
—Pretty to watch; he had a pretty body.
And then one day they came and took us
off.
Now I live here, another island,
that doesn’t seem like one, but who
decides?
My blood was full of them; my
brain
bred islands. But that archipelago
has petered out. I’m old.
I’m bored, too, drinking my real
tea,
surrounded by uninteresting lumber.
The knife there on the shelf—
it reeked of meaning, like a crucifix.
It lived. How many years did
I
beg it, implore it, not to break?
I knew each nick and scratch by heart,
the bluish blade, the broken tip,
the lines of wood-grain on the handle
...
Now it won’t look at me at
all.
The living soul has dribbled
away.
My eyes rest on it and pass on.
The local museum’s asked me to
leave everything to them:
the flute, the knife, the shrivelled
shoes,
my shedding goatskin trousers
(moths have got in the fur),
the parasol that took me such a
time
remembering the way the ribs should go.
It still will work but, folded up,
looks like a plucked and skinny fowl.
How can anyone want such things?
—And Friday, my dear Friday, died of
measles
seventeen years ago come March.
