Having turned for home
all that seperates us is time and space
and these problems can be overcome.
There is no more difference
of intention
of direction -
time and space are the wound,
intention is the weapon.
ALREADY WITH OUR BACKS TO THE SETTING SUN
Already with our backs to the setting sun
The beach bum feeling seems inappropriate
We have turned away
Like a fight refused
Something that we might have done
But chose not to
To merge instead
With the dark hugga mugga
Of North and winter
Clinging to stoves
Flapping in crowds
And remembering.
YOU! WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE, MR MILLER?
The brown stain in the air
Tints all leavings of land
Final last glances
Polluting all memories.
The water pumps
Streaming out through the scuppers
Wash the tropics from our decks.
I walk flat footed like Windy Miller
For fear of falling over.
I run out of things to say about travel
Morale swings high to low, low to lower
This is a journey
In that it contains almost nothing else
All the symptoms of movement are there -
The hotel room, the uncontrollable food,
The difficulty keeping hold of your own life -
But without the factor that travel is for:
New experience.
I suppose people carry their own bubble world
And that is what saves them from unbearable knowledge
The respectable do not meet the people I meet
We flock to each other, we difficult ones
We recognise each other internationally,
Everything about us speaks to each other
Says "I'm trouble"
We entertain each other
We know how
We know what entertains us
We see those others in the hotel bars
But skirt the edges of real darkness
That one you don't emerge from
That ties you to an elastic pitch
Many miles in every way from where you started
Now trapped in what you thought you wanted.
But all that now is tiny patches
Between the endless self-regarding sea
Who could really enjoy this?
Who would do this
For pleasure?
2100: Clocks FORWARD one hour.
1530: The First Officer told me that the humidity in Moin was 95%. That explains the waterfall sweat. It still felt more comfortable than Marrakech at midday though.
1145: At lunch Peter told me he got back at 2 a.m. after visiting several bars. After that his German got a bit technical for me but anyhow, whatever happened, it seems enough for Peter. He doesn't want to go ashore at Point-a-Pitre. He wants to stay on the ship until it reaches Hamburg. He seems to be putting himself into hibernation.
1010: I returned to the ship. The Captain told me we are now to go back to Point-a-Pitre in Guadeloupe to collect empty containers. He said we might get ashore there.
A ship tied up
As firm as the landscape
Dead in the water
Is like a dawn at sea
Undetermined in status
Second by second
Is it or isn't it?
When does it cease to be?
The ropes fall
And slow hauls
But still locked in land
Heavily controlled
Like a large beast
By whips
Punishments
And kindly words
For ports and harbours
Are slaughterhouses of ships
One day she will sail in
And never sail out.
The main purpose of seamen
is to be ripped off by the taxi drivers of the world,
fountains of bottomless desperation
to grab an hour ashore
to be with other humans,
especially that exotic half of the world ,
in any facility that caters for this purpose
and most of them serve drink.
The illuminated night-time islands,
all that is available once
the taxi comes two hours late,
spew him forth, lucky to reach his ship,
with a few small memories that inflate to fill his head
as he trudges about the seas
as though they were motorways,
one day that might kill him.
0930: Back at the small boat dock I got talking to one of the boatmen, Robert. Again I told him I had only about half an hour before I had to be aboard the ship. He said why didn’t I have a ten-minute boat ride? Costa Ricans - such great thinkers! Why would such a simple solution never occur to a British person? Because we are used to being told what we want in an authoritarian, patronising, dispiriting, imagination-killing headmistress money-driven sate of which the Blunkett/ Blair axis is a perfect embodiment.
So I went for a short boat ride and it was fantastic. Robert was an excellent host and commentator and the steersman, whose name I didn't catch, was superb, bringing me back on the plane. I saw egrets, blue heron, some birds called I think the Jarrancha, and a real cayman crocodile. So I did well with my walk. I like Costa Rica .
0830: So I took the cameras and the MKE300 and went out of the port. Boatmen were touting for trade by the entrance to the compound, but I told them I didn’t have time for a trip as I was leaving soon.
I walked along a track for about half an hour hoping it would go into Moin, but it turned out to be a dead end. In one way this was a total waste of time, of which I had very little, but it did produce one serendipitous moment of film/ sound for which I'm very glad and I got some useful walking pieces to camera.
All night long they have been about
The all-night business of banana business
It cannot be worth all this effort
Just to have bananas
The banana was the real profiteer
From World War Two
In their enforced absence from the greengrocers
That yellow 2lb hand became a legend
A measure of what was lost and what there was to gain
But when it came back
In ships we believed full of spiders
The main fact about the banana
Was that there had been none
But so what?
I like a banana
I am not a great fruit fan
But I would always eat a banana
After all, they are rich in potassium
Eat enough and we will whizz uncontrollably about our baths
Hissing and glowing -
This is me every morning
But we should spare these ships their endeavours
Let the deckies go home to their deckwives
Too many suffer too much
For this yellow curse
Let them rot on their vines
Let them droop on their bushes
Let them sway into sunset in their banana meadows
Basta banana!