The Time Around Scars by Michael Ondaatje
The Time Around Scars
Michael OndaatjeA girl whom I’ve not spoken to
or shared coffee with for several years
writes of an old scar.
On her wrist it sleeps, smooth and white,
the size of a leech.
I gave it to her
brandishing a new Italian penknife.
Look, I said turning,
and blood spat onto her shirt.My wife has scars like spread raindrops
on knees and ankles,
she talks of broken greenhouse panes
and yet, apart from imagining red feet,
(a nymph out of Chagall)
I bring little to that scene.
We remember the time around scars,
they freeze irrelevant emotions
and divide us from present friends.
I remember this girl’s face,
the widening rise of surprise.And would she
moving with lover or husband
conceal or flaunt it,
or keep it at her wrist
a mysterious watch.
And this scar I then remember
is a medallion of no emotion.I would meet you now
and I would wish this scar
to have been given with
all the love
that never occurred between us.
MARGINALIA
This is the space where I should say something. But I only have a photograph of a pavement, and a cigarette.
—
(•)
ABOUT MICHAEL ONDAATJE
Poet, novelist, and editor Michael Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka in 1943. He lived in England as a child, and when he was 18, he moved to Canada, where he now lives with his wife, the novelist Linda Spalding. He earned a BA from the University of Toronto and an MA from Queens University. He has received many awards for his work, including two Governor’s General Awards and the Booker Prize for his novel The English Patient (1992). He is the author of the poetry… (more)
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ENDNOTES
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Juliette
So glad to have come across this poem, it echoes a scene in Ondaatje’s The English Patient where Almasy remembers his former lover’s vaccination scars. I wonder which was written first..