A Chinese Girl I Took To a Nunnery

A Chinese girl I took to a nunnery I I led her Her silent leg-irons cutting into my shins That day when the air stood still Dry as the day perhaps on the hill when he spoke standing still Drier still my words today of a redundant ransom of flesh: I’ll take you to the stopping place Where the quiet cowled nuns make lace They run a school for well-bred girls In a cloistered fenced-in arbour There where you’d have no need for curls She turned just then seven and ten Me barely two more when She said in a breathless moan: Take me to the French Convent Here my road has come to an end I want to learn I want to gain As much knowledge as my brain Will strive to contain I had no choice I had no voice In a Chinese school which stopped midways She was the best of forty times five Where I was hoarse from English and Science She sat so close in the front row She must have felt my breath at home Her cowlick hand stretched crooked Brushed my thoughts down my mane Something about her dragging gait Spoke of late hours as a kitchen mate Or as the matron of squabbling squawking siblings When the mother scrubbed and ironed the landlord’s lingerie and loins A saddened face she kept awake All through the hours at stake II It took me days and days of doubting pains To ring at last the nunnery bell And to stare aghast at a pallid face Not quite white and not quite couched in cowl To register my request The novice drew and barred the door As though I would break down the wall And as the minutes raced in anguish by And I heard the rusted pig-iron latch click open Two forbidding eyes contemplated my plight Under strictly starched and stretched folds a-sail: “Is she Catho…” she made to ask Then as urgently withdrew her demand. “Bring her tomorrow at eight,” she let her words escape. “Ring the bell at the gate.” I never saw the demure girl again. Her schoolmates thought she worked for the nuns. Others: “ She took some vows!” A sibling: “ She took no clothes for a change!” Just before her silhouette effaced itself Under the porch of creepers dense She turned to give me a look: Was it a look of despair Or a well-thought-out farewell fair? © T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013