My Fig Tree Don’t Let Me Go.

 

(from my cinema script "The Neighbourhood")



 

 

“Where is
your soul, now, my Queen, my fig tree?





Where your
eyes?





Are your
roots still there, rotten, proud and grey,





the hair of
fate upside-down in dismay?





Where could
this soul be flying? 





Could she
be in your seeds?





Inside your
offspring?”





 





My Fig Tree
won’t let me go.





I say this
in certainty





for the
little fig tree plants are still growing





among the
wild bushes behind houses,





a treat for
a look,





a tree and
a hook you can never escape.





-not that
it would let go anyway -





 





Which yards
are you now shading with your million silver-green palms?





Which children
are you feeding with your sumptuous fruit? 






Your holy
empire,





the
priests, your followers.





If I dig
now where you retire,





and find
the thirty pills I never took down,





 what says you, if I do so,





and all the
full quantity take





with a
single swallow





and a pint
of fine ouzo?





-you know,
once I heard an ancient Greek call out “OU ZO!” -





I watched
as he wisely fell from his own Queen Fig Tree,





and I saw
him die right there





with
splashed ripe figs under his smashed corpse.





Green figs
smirking with red slashes





are still
falling on his shattered chest bones.





 





“So tell me,
Eternal Lady,





If I
swallow them pills,





still dive
from up there





and dance
with your falling flesh,





Will it be
over, will I be free?”