The Road to Pai -- by File

Guardian.co.uk (remember them?) now have a poetry blog where you can post your own pomes on a different subject each week. Needless to say File and Zeph have been prowling about there, and File wrote this one for the 'scenic spots' topic:


The Road to Pai


“Follow that scent!” you say
To the tuk-tuk pilot
In the day-glo jacket.
He smiles, soi
Disperse wildly
In every direction.
It’s the perfume of his birth, of breakfast
Of klong and death
It’s inside his sun-washed,
Knocked-off Diesel t-shirt
The ink under his skin
And long days working
In traffic

You decide on
A private eye,
Renting a Yamaha 125
For yourself. You set off,
Out of the city, into the mountains, climbing
Spiral roads by spirit houses’
Painted eaves and gold leaf like gold teeth
In the dark mouths of jungles. Here
Lie homes for ghosts, secret
Agents of other worlds, instinctively you know
Interrogating saffron
Won’t help.

Still pursuing hues
Looking down now on rice paddies,
The shade of verdant that is liquid emerald
Eddies in the shimmering late afternoon
Stream. Freewheeling
Past warnings of landmines
And signs to hot springs, sources
And waterfalls, informants
Furtive whisperings
At the hidden ends of dirt tracks
Off the main road that
Traces the valley to Pai.

The Shan fingerprint below
Twists into focus
The wooden ridges, shaded whorls
That once sheltered horses
Now keeps vinyl seats of trail bikes
Out of the heat of the day.

Finding chicken curry and noodles,
Cold Beer Chang and harsh menthol cigarettes
Called Falling Rain or
‘Saifon’ in the local sing-song
Which dips and soars; smoke kites on
Fickle thermals over the two-stroke
Spiked beats of mopeds
Laden with durian or jackfruit or corn
Or laughing children
On their way home from school
Looking right back at you

They say: “We’re all detective,
We are all clues”

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