between our mouths.
‘Who was talking with you?’
‘The listening bird, my son.’
Amo didn’t answer that it was impossible for birds to talk, he rose, looked into every corner and then, leaning through the window, watched the sky.
‘The bird is gone: he said. ‘But the clouds are foaming over the lake. I can smell rain.’
I knew what he was thinking then, for he had seen with me the fever and the stomach sickness of the earth after rainfall.
‘Birds smell it sooner than we do.’
He nodded to my words.
2
I hate the Sky Man when he is nothing but the sky. He will suffocate us with his plants, mushrooms and moss before the hooves of his multiplying beasts trample our breed into this fertile mud. What else is he keeping in readiness under the ground? How many more times must his sky fall upon us, so that his slow strangulation will be complete to his revengeful joy? But the Sky Man will never hear a cry from me, the woman whom he mocks through my husband’s stupid mouth as the mother of the earth.
Mother: I would vomit with all my entrails to feel the birth pangs of those slimy pods tearing up the surface as soon as the rain sinks into it. I would bite my own womb with the thorns of the rose bush, if the leaves and the petals that get drunk with rain-water whimpered their love to me. The trees are different, they have pride and age; and whenever they bow before me as they all used to, I understand the sacred sound of my name. The trees remember. They once shared with us their infancy and their silent innocence. But one day the sky and the earth might both open wide in one gasp to smash and suck in the crowns, the trunks, the roots, the whole ancient colonnade erected between the two heavens when the heavens were young and joined in matrimony.
The storm last night overturned the cedar which I had chosen as the landmark for all my paths when the house was only a circle on the ground, nothing else. Now the cedar fell, its roots broke and showed the clods of black earth they were still clutching; and I wanted to pull down the walls of my home so that they could grip something harder.
Amo was on all fours, like a beast, chasing the growing lichen out of the doorway, hitting and squashing the popping heads of mushrooms.
‘The roof is all tangled hair, mother, even the long beams are sprouting green wisps. Stalks, twigs, leaves, buds—everything, mother, is moving and crackling.’
‘Get up, stand on your legs, Amo, you’re not a sniffing animal. Climb on to that roof. Plants won’t eat you, my son, you’re not an insect.’
Amo climbed up. His own black hair became entangled in the green tentacles and he kept banging his head with his right fist, with his left clung to a piece of wood inside the leafy, wet swarm. Suddenly, he thought of something else, let his legs go as far as the stone barring the entrance and stood again on the ground.
‘I’ll get some sedge and a handful of mint-herbs, spread them well across the roof, and the big leaf-eaters will fly in, mother, so many of them that they’ll do my work before the sun touches this stone.’
Amo was right, and the leaf-eaters came as if summoned by his hunting yell. Yes, my seventh son had a quick mind and knew the habits of hunters, whether they ran their prey down for the kill or ate it alive on the spot, still growing at their mouth. When the earth had dried near the house by noon, I burnt the lichen up to the stone gate, lit another fire in the midst of mushrooms and their stench drove away the crawlers with hairy horns and leaping eyes. Then I lay down behind the trunk of the fallen cedar and put my arm on it in the gesture of a wedded woman. I rested with my tree though the tree was dead and showing its roots to the sun, which would strip them to the smooth whiteness of bone.
Amo was now in his flat twin boat on my lake, hunting the hunters of the water.
In daylight and in darkness, in rain and after the storm, I had my
‘Who was talking with you?’
‘The listening bird, my son.’
Amo didn’t answer that it was impossible for birds to talk, he rose, looked into every corner and then, leaning through the window, watched the sky.
‘The bird is gone: he said. ‘But the clouds are foaming over the lake. I can smell rain.’
I knew what he was thinking then, for he had seen with me the fever and the stomach sickness of the earth after rainfall.
‘Birds smell it sooner than we do.’
He nodded to my words.
2
I hate the Sky Man when he is nothing but the sky. He will suffocate us with his plants, mushrooms and moss before the hooves of his multiplying beasts trample our breed into this fertile mud. What else is he keeping in readiness under the ground? How many more times must his sky fall upon us, so that his slow strangulation will be complete to his revengeful joy? But the Sky Man will never hear a cry from me, the woman whom he mocks through my husband’s stupid mouth as the mother of the earth.
Mother: I would vomit with all my entrails to feel the birth pangs of those slimy pods tearing up the surface as soon as the rain sinks into it. I would bite my own womb with the thorns of the rose bush, if the leaves and the petals that get drunk with rain-water whimpered their love to me. The trees are different, they have pride and age; and whenever they bow before me as they all used to, I understand the sacred sound of my name. The trees remember. They once shared with us their infancy and their silent innocence. But one day the sky and the earth might both open wide in one gasp to smash and suck in the crowns, the trunks, the roots, the whole ancient colonnade erected between the two heavens when the heavens were young and joined in matrimony.
The storm last night overturned the cedar which I had chosen as the landmark for all my paths when the house was only a circle on the ground, nothing else. Now the cedar fell, its roots broke and showed the clods of black earth they were still clutching; and I wanted to pull down the walls of my home so that they could grip something harder.
Amo was on all fours, like a beast, chasing the growing lichen out of the doorway, hitting and squashing the popping heads of mushrooms.
‘The roof is all tangled hair, mother, even the long beams are sprouting green wisps. Stalks, twigs, leaves, buds—everything, mother, is moving and crackling.’
‘Get up, stand on your legs, Amo, you’re not a sniffing animal. Climb on to that roof. Plants won’t eat you, my son, you’re not an insect.’
Amo climbed up. His own black hair became entangled in the green tentacles and he kept banging his head with his right fist, with his left clung to a piece of wood inside the leafy, wet swarm. Suddenly, he thought of something else, let his legs go as far as the stone barring the entrance and stood again on the ground.
‘I’ll get some sedge and a handful of mint-herbs, spread them well across the roof, and the big leaf-eaters will fly in, mother, so many of them that they’ll do my work before the sun touches this stone.’
Amo was right, and the leaf-eaters came as if summoned by his hunting yell. Yes, my seventh son had a quick mind and knew the habits of hunters, whether they ran their prey down for the kill or ate it alive on the spot, still growing at their mouth. When the earth had dried near the house by noon, I burnt the lichen up to the stone gate, lit another fire in the midst of mushrooms and their stench drove away the crawlers with hairy horns and leaping eyes. Then I lay down behind the trunk of the fallen cedar and put my arm on it in the gesture of a wedded woman. I rested with my tree though the tree was dead and showing its roots to the sun, which would strip them to the smooth whiteness of bone.
Amo was now in his flat twin boat on my lake, hunting the hunters of the water.
In daylight and in darkness, in rain and after the storm, I had my
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