Words for the Chisel (collection)/Poppy Juice

by Genevieve Taggard

Poppy Juice

There is an island in an alien slant
Of water running endlessly on its edge
Whose mountains shut at sunset like a plant
Against a sea of darkness. When the wedge—
The peak of shadow skims the valley ledge,
The island locks its color up, leaves bare
Its beaches to the sea, the colorless air.

And people in the cup of sea and sky
Among the painted island's blues and reds
See every night the wedge of shadow fly
Across their valleys, over all their heads
And shut their eyes, and hide themselves in beds;—
Meanwhile the sea spread level on the tide
Prowls in its surf. Lehua lived and died

Under this quarrel, this twofold daily change . . .
Her men found graves along the China coast:
Eric the elder;—then the other strange
Eric, her son, who wanted to be lost.
Lehua knew too well which she loved most.
She ended like a barnacle fastened where
The harbor waters see-saw. It is there.—

The little shack the schooners anchored by . . .
They tried, the other day to raid the den,
They found a passive Buddha hung up high,
Eight grams of opium and some Chinamen
With one kanaka hag. They asked her when
She took to living there. She gave no answer.
—There was a woman once, a hula dancer

Who kept this place, said someone half aloud.
She turned her back and muttered with a frown,
They took her with her pipe away,
The crowd Moved off behind. Enormous night came down
And made a ruby of the tropic town
And heaped the sea upon the open shore—
And no one saw the woman any more.

The hollow lantern hung like a fat spider
With four words in Chinese, lettered dull red,
The door was creaking in, opening wider,
You saw a crooked stool, an iron bed,
Old canisters of tea and chunks of bread. . .
The moon slipped past the window like a ghost—
And touched the pink-nosed Buddha on the post.

Eric had brought the Buddha from Japan.
He laid it on the table, near, for her.
She took it shyly up. The color ran
Into her lips. The saw how red they were.
The carving smelt of sandal-wood and myrrh;
She laughed and kissed it. Eric waiting, grim,
Was thinking how her body suited him.

She was the eeriest woman anywhere
On the Pacific, or Pacific shores;—
So fragile and so savage, with the stare
Of delicate deer halted on all fours . . .
Lehua ran with laughter from the snores
Of all the heavy white-men who had found
Smoke more substantial than her singing sound.

She had come down from the valleys very young
Just sixteen—lodged with friends who kept a house
For haole sailors. When her song was sung
And danced her dance, Eric would seem to rouse
From lethargy, until a long carouse
Ended in silence, while she smiled and darted
Beyond his grasp. And he grew sullen hearted.

She knew he was a smuggler and a cold
White-angered Swede, and not the man for her;
But still she wore her flowers white and gold,
And shrugged at him, but shunned him oftener
With feints to snare him till she saw him stir
Like a lean tiger roused from wary sleeping,
So Eric rose and came, stalking and creeping.

What Eric wanted more than simply some
Woman or other, neither he nor she
Knew. The waited, eyed her, narrow and dumb;
Another white man took her on his knee,
And there they sat,—furtive and treacherous three,
Till she, Lehua, rose and fled far out
On the long pier, and paused. And faced about.

She married him and hated him. He strode
Like some rude giant in their narrow den;
His head would sway the lamps that gloomed and glowed
Faint in the hazy cloud. The prostrate men
Stirred at his proddings, drowsed to sleep again;
Eric would bang the door, forgetting her
Go out to wharves where ships and seamen were,

And she would sit aside and sigh and dream,
Dream as she lingered at the window-pane;
She loved the mountains and the mountain stream:
She longed to smell the maile vine again
Spreading its odor with the drowsy rain.
—I hate the sea, she said—the smell of tar,
I want to go where pools and palm-trees are.

Men were afraid to speak to her. She dreamed
Like a young virgin tenderly, and more
Indifferent than aged women,—seemed
To be again as she had been before
She came to town a hula-girl and whore;
Only great Eric strode across her trance,
Laughed loud to see her shudder at his glance.

Late in the evenings came the sound of whips,
Hoof-beats and cries; the long banana-train
Came from the valleys to the riding ships;
Donkeys were loaded with ripe sugar-cane,
And wet banana-leaves gleaming with rain.
The mountain fastnesses she saw, the tall
Still palms, and heard the mountain water-fall.

The water-fall that poured, rushing in quiet,—
That seemed to fall and then to wane and hang;
And the pale tree that rose so lightly by it—
The maile vine that wound on the lang-lang.
This place was fixed: this picture was a pang.
She saw it with the shutting of an eye
White on the darkness of another sky.

Waves mocked her then, and the whispering hush
Spreading with sunset gave her heart small ease;
At night along the reefs, the unending rush—
Not like the noise that falters in the trees
Above the lesser ripples of the breeze;
Lying awake she listened tense and wept;
Or she would wail and murmur if she slept.

He said he'd take her with him once. She clung
To the sharp bedstead like a frantic child
Who fears the attic darkness. When he wrung
Her fingers from the bed-post, Eric smiled
And carried her as far as where the piled
Barrels of saki made a tunnel,—there
She screamed till Eric hushed her with her hair.

He left his wife ashore to sell the rice,
She kept the gambling house and kept it loose;
What stakes were won with throwing of the dice
They shoved into her lap for poppy juice.
She knew the trade now. Eric knew her use.
In all the foreign ports he boasted how
His fair kanaka kept her marriage vow.

—Just a kanaka, but not like the kind
That changes into niggers, Eric said
Coming to port, not knowing what to find,
But she was there, and sullen, being wed.
—You are a sailor's woman. When I'm dead
You can go off with someone on a spree,
But now, no matter what, you stick to me.

—And here I am, she said—Big with a child,
And Eric's child. Why Eric's? Tell me why
I married him? I never wanted wild
Acres of sea or sailors. She would cry,
Beat on the window. Eric going by
Was beautiful and terrible to her
As her own brother dark men never were.

So Eric ran the gales for years between
This harbor and the Orient. She grew
More slender with the years and more serene;
Sight of her son gave pride to her anew;
There was a whispered pact between these two.
She called him Eric. In her heart she said,
—A few years and his father will be dead.

—A few years and we two will leave this place,
Find some far valley shut to sea and ships.
Perhaps its narrow beauty will erase
These haole smiles and sorrows from my face,
Now I am weary and my throat and lips
Parched with the rank black smoke . . . I am not fair
As once I was. We will be happy there.

—We will be happy where we both belong
Growing our taro. Kanakas are not made
For struggle, little Eric. We are strong
Only in endless rustles of green shade.
And you will bring me bread-fruit. I will braid
Mats for our hut and keep a little pig,
And we will have a feast when he is big.

Kanaka blood in him, blood of a dancer
Took him away and made him wary at
Her happy valley plan. He didn't answer
All her sharp questions when he came but sat
Tight in the corner like a cougar-cat.
She had forgotten how she used to be
Before she was rebuked by the blind sea.

And Eric's blood was like a thing at feud
With all her languid color and her fair
Clusters of flowers;—so he fled her mood,
Followed his father, always, everywhere,
A dark man at his heels,—a funny pair
To everyone who saw Lehua frown
And watch them as they wandered up and down.

The men around would offer her a smoke.
—A smuggler takes no opium, she said.
Suppose old Eric came before I woke?
She was shrewd now and always kept her head.
She wore an amber flower and a red
Silk holuku.—The smoke is made for men;
When one pipe's taken, there's no stopping then.

Some few knew why she left the smoke alone,
And burned a lantern nightly at the door,
Her boy was strong as steel and fully grown
And Eric nursed a leper's snowy sore.
They would outlive him Jong, and what was more
Live as they chose to live on Eric's gold—
And Eric knew they watched him growing old.

Eric the elder a leper! And she
Who shared the labor of the opium trade
In love with nothing brutal like the sea,
A fragile woman, only half afraid,
Something between a mother and a maid.
Eric was dying now, warping and grim:
He always took the boy to sea with him.

She never dreaded sickness,—only feared
This Swedish love of water. She would be
On the old wharf-end always when he neared
Drawing him back to make him anchor. He
Climbed like a sailor, agile, prancingly,
But he was polished bronze, and walked as one
Whose race had been emboldened by the sun.

She spread a net to keep him in the brief
Time of his staying,—wore a sheer dress,
Yellow and red, a spotted mango-leaf
That eddied on her body. Happiness
Ran in her voice. Minnows and water-cress,
All little treasures she had gleaned she poured
Out on the pier before him. Ocean roared.

It was a day as light and sunny sweet
As any in a valley. Flashing brown,
The boy was diving, circling at her feet,
And she would lean and almost wish to drown,
Then up he climbed. And suddenly plunged down
Dragging her with him under and under. They
Always were terrified, after that day.

So, like a landsman, this young Eric stood
In the low door-way of the little den
Unable to go back to ship. One mood
Hung over both. The night was full of men
Putting to sea and sea was loud again
With the long wooing of a plangent woe. . .
She cut the web at last and let him go.

Across the harbor stood the Wainae,
Vast opal mountains open to the sun
Save for the middle, where the deep shades lie
Purple and blue. She watched the shadows run
Into the fastness of the cleft, where none
But shadow people go, and none return
Out of old depths of sandal-wood and fern.

And then old Eric died. She heard the news
As one who waits too long to alter much
The heavy groove of living. Smuggler crews
Stole in at night to bring her smoke and touch
Women and drink her saki. She was such
A witch for all kanaka boys that they
Didn't dare tell her all they came to say.

Didn't dare tell her how her son had dropped
His father into green, under the bow;
Didn't dare tell her how he furled, and stopped,
Then tacked for days above him. Chiefly how
This huge Hawaiian skipper picked a row
With every Swede who said she was a whore
Or told old Eric's trouble. So ashore

He dumped his Chinese cargo, left it all
For any muddy pirate, hidden in weeds,
And ran without a ballast into a squall
Like a pure madman, having left his Swedes
Who knew some navigation mere half-breeds
Never quite master . . . Docked at last and slid
Into the Hong Kong crowds. There, what he did

Those winter months—smoked or followed women,
Or looked for secret cures, or simply loafed,
Nobody knew . . . But he got his men
One day in April when the skies were soft
And set them first to scrubbing deck. Aloft
The canvas thundered gently. Eric wore
A turban like an Arab. Words he swore

Were taken from his father, and the crew
Declared his father left him other things,
The white man's gift among them. Eric knew,
They called him hap' a haole, and the stings
Of many ancient jests and mutterings
Drove him to sea, where he was master, where
He strode the deck and drank the tropic air.

Out of the west, out of a wordless year
His schooner came one day, riding the reef;
With sunset on her topsails she came near;
This coming rode on old Lehua's grief
Bringing her eyes unreasonable relief;
She sang that day, put on her spotted gown
And watched them anchor, haul her canvas down.

At last night came, so breathless and so black—
The old rats left off gnawing, and the tide
Mouthed with its toothless gums, the timber-stack.
A single star was open, crystal-eyed
When she let down a lantern over-side.
She swung it twice above the water-mark
Then drew it up, and blew the lantern dark.

An oar dipped from the bay. Came the faint creak
Of locks and running ripples at the bow.
She brushed her hair impatient from her cheek.
Eric was coming. Eric was coming now.
—Mother, he said—I can't land. Anyhow
I didn't come for long. Don't miss me—I—
Mother, he said—I've come to say goodbye.

Why did he come so stealthily as if
He were a seaman still, a criminal
On shore. He sat there hidden, talking, stiff . . .
His voice in darkness sounded beautiful.
Beating on shore resounded the loud, dull
Chant of the sea that followed when—he fled;
She wished he were with her, safe in his bed.

—I've got to go away and leave this place,
The smuggling time is over here. And you . . .
You've never seen me much, to miss my face.
I've got a fine old ship. I've signed a crew.
I want to see the world. Her black hair blew
Black as the night and covered up her eyes.
She knew that she was listening to lies.

The shadows of the ships all loomed up vast;
Felt but not seen they stood, tangled in air.
There was no light in heaven or earth to cast
Light on the stealthy tide, nor anywhere
Sound but of his voice below her there.
—Darkness and sea, she said,—darkness and sea,
And my own son has turned away from me.

—Here is some gold, he said.—Mother believe
I go away from you because I must.
Don't touch me, Mother. Mother, don't you grieve.
I'll come again. I promise you. I just . . .
She lit her lantern, shaking then. He thrust
An oar against the wharf-end as she swung
Her light sharp on the water. Cold she hung

Peering. He sat there dazzled in the glare
Of her sick lantern . . . saw his forehead so
Horrible white (his eyes threatened her stare . . .),
A scar like a half moon. Softly—Now you know,
Mother, damn you, now will you let me go?
The sea between them lifted, fell and spoke,
And after that she slept and never woke.

She took to smoke that night, deafened her ears
To sea, to sound of the sea, and prowling ships;
Smoke veiled her eyes and with the hurrying years
Set its dry seal upon her withering lips,
Darkening her face from men in dull eclipse.
—He took his father's name, she'd vacantly say,
A father, a father took a son away.

So with the years she sat and saw his ghost
Rise in the phantom vapors of the air;
The passive little Buddha on the post
Changed countenance to see the spectre there . . .
Deep in the drowsy perfume of her hair
Beside the spectre presence of her son
She found the valley of oblivion.

But not the other valley. No one comes
Near its serene reality. The tall
Bow of the water bends itself and drums
On the bare rocks. No voice will ever call
Or ever answer from the valley wall.
Untouched by dream it hangs in emptiness,
And the pure stream pours on and is no less.