Kokovoko
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 March 2020
Summary
We did not find Kokovoko
You promised, said Passepartout
Sometimes fiction cannot cause reality, I screamed
– Sometimes? she asked
But you did promise me: “Kokovoko”
I did.
And in the hours of tedium she sang
Ditty after ditty about her prince from Kokovoko
Who would steal on us and take her on his fancy-wood canoe
In the moonlight he would take her to the coasts of Orinoco
Where the silver fish of Chavez flow downstream
from the Andes upland-highlands of Peru
or she would disappear in endless rhyme-games of Kokovoko, koko, loco
coco, yoko anything to free me she would moan from the constant, daily, you!
But we did see the whalers
We saw how they were struck,
how they were killed and how they were sliced and cut
And even saved a Greenpeace volunteer
From wave and shark
There was nibbling but it could have been
An eel or something nastier but never the jaws of death
It is beautiful tho’,
She said
That we are here and not
Like them
Like the thousands on the shore
Needing each a penny for their ocean reveries
Or the Andaman islanders removing salt flakes with tiny tweezers
to free their land from Tsunami Jo's unasked for gift
I wrapped her in seaweed hammock,
hoisted her up, eye-level
twisted her around until she hung unmoving
and explained the basic rules of craft-oil, blubber and sperm.
“You whale and me Ahab I said.”
Here – inside your head would be your junk: particles of oil, thousands of
oilnests or pimples. Exactly… we have more bone to oil. It's your tits
or your bum that may be more generous.”
My fingers over her head and behind the neck,
there…that's
where most of it is: the oilsperm…it is soft and wobbly…
becomes hard jelly if exposed…thousands of litres of sperm.
You look pathetic you are such a useless mammal”
You promised me Kokovoko! How good the drink
How light the heart, how gay our jokes our maps
Here: Scheria where I would find my Nausica to help forget Aouda
There: Lilliput and next, look at that Haleakoloa!
No to the right! Dr. Moreau's islands!
- Type
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- Information
- From Around the World in Eighty DaysThe India Section, pp. 92 - 95Publisher: University of South AfricaPrint publication year: 2014