Definition - Michael Ondaatje

[Lawrence Robinson]

Definition

All afternoon I stroll the plotless thirteen hundred 
pages of a Sanskrit dictionary 
with its verbs for holy obsessions, 
the name for an alcove 
of coin washers whose fingers glint 
all night with dark lead, grains of silver 

Here root vowels take 
an accent at high altitudes 

the way dictionaries 
speak over mountains 

A single word to portray light 
from that distant village 
reflected in a cloud 
or your lover's face lit 
by the moonlight on a stage 

Landscapes nudge the dialect  
In far places travellers know 
a faint gesture can mean 
desire or scorn, 
			just as 
a sliver of a phrase thrown away 
hides charms within its grammar  

			--- A guru 
"someone with a light touch" 
derives from that short vowel, alone 
and before a single consonant 

Wherever you turn 
definitions push open a door  

The precisely named odour of a man 
who is a heart-thief  

a word for the highest compilation 
during a play used also for impregnation 

Attributes of character 
link themselves to professions 
-- a metal worker, the river merchant, 
the Commissioner of Oaths,  
the census taker of birds who  
continues the medieval art 
of whistling, 

those who carry bees on their arm 
like a dark flame, 

the sullen recluse 
who was once the author 
of a prayer 

This word for a pool before a temple, 
or a n s a -- "the shape of a shoulder blade" 
as in the corner of a holy quadrangle 

	*

		The ancient phrases 
give you the coin of escape 
-- that epithet for those who return 
to broken relationships repeatedly 
will row you away from confusion 

or remain only for remembrance 

This is how deep I was lost, 
my darling, in a love so narcotic 
I possessed unimpaired splendour 
having no other want or wish 

What was there before 
there was the warmth of that word 
for your shoulder blade, 
or that time before we moved 
to a freedom from desire?  

		- Michael Ondaatje
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