IN THAT SLUM OF A NEIGHBOURHOOD

IN THAT SLUM OF A NEIGHBOURHOOD

In that slum of a neighbourhood

you were the Butterscotch Man.

Old. East Indian. Sikh. Kind.

Long white beard and hair

pouring out of your turban.

And as I can remember you now

fifty-four years later

you were a cloud circling the peak

of Mt. Sumeru

the world mountain

that walked among children

handing out one hard butterscotch candy to each.

You’re always there in my childhood

on the corner of Douglas and Hillside

by the totem-pole telephone booth

everyone jimmied for change,

reaching deep into

your tattered sports coat pocket

with a look of gleeful gratitude on your face

that the light had smiled upon you like a child

asking for a candy.

We were too busy playing for keeps

to know how or when you died.

One day we just knew you did.

And we broke into your small ratty house,

that crutch of a box that could barely stand,

and we saw how poor you were

so much poorer than us

and even though you had an address

here in Canada among us

and stared out through the same windows

at the same demeaning day

at the doors of the desperately poor as we did,

how inestimably far you really were from home

and how alone.

There was so little to steal

who could have robbed you?

But I remember the strange calendars

no one could tell the time by in Sanskrit

shedding the pictures

of the same unnamed goddess

in flaming sunset colours

like the petals of a lotus with its eyes closed.

I can’t forget the calendars.

Or how we went on looking

for large hairy black wolf spiders

hiding in the darker corners

of your abandoned rooms

we could drop hot match-heads on

to watch them run like startled wicks.

Some kids grow up like saplings.

We grew up like sticks.

But that one butterscotch candy

you were always good for

like some unknown kindness

we could infallibly depend on

however the rest of it hurt

has kept on releasing its sweetness in me

over the years

like some philosopher’s stone

that rolled down from a very high mountain of a man

that still stands before me in his turban

even at this distance

through the bluing of time.

I can still see you on any clear day

like snow-capped Mt. Baker on the horizon

across the Straits of Georgia

all the way to Washington State

from the southern tip of Vancouver Island.

And if you were alive now

I would thank you better than I ever did then

when we approached you like a bird-feeder

apprehensively as birds.

You were handing out

your wisdom your life your light

the largesse of your spirit

without words.

Now I’ve come back alone

for all of us who’ve gone our different ways

like the wind and the waves

and the heavy clouds

of the world we shared back then,

some to prison

some to god knows where

and some to early graves

like the seeds of bad beginnings.

And it’s not that I want to set things right

because things are never really wrong

to a strong mountain

that knows how to stand on its own

among humans

without blocking the light

and there never was a time

whenever I saw you as a child

I didn’t look upon you with delight.

But now as a man

I see you as a long dark night

streaming with stars down the Himalayas

like the eternal Ganges whose waters

I imagine myself standing by for your sake

to throw my heart in

like that shoot of a rose of blood

you rooted in our ancestral starmud

like a Taj Mahal of light in the slums

of a North American night on earth

where the children who went to bed

in that cast-off neighbourhood

like unanswered prayers

stoically beyond their years

like prodigies of disappointment

brutally acquainted with the dark side of Santa Claus

wondering why they weren’t worth much

to the people who were supposed to love them,

remembered you

and how much of the world can be saved forever

like the taste of kindness

in a half-finished butterscoth candy under a pillow

as hard as stone

dreaming of a huge big-hearted mountain

that thawed the milk of human kindness

to run down our lives like the lifelines

of the melting ice-cream cone

you looked like to us in your turban.

Thank-you.

May this rose of a poem

find you everywhere

like the children’s eyes

you opened like moments of light

to star in a dark world

as if every one of those timeless moments

were the lifespan of one of your many afterlives

handing out candies on the corners

of all the myriad worlds

where the children run to your shining

like children of the morning

with eyes as bright as morning dew

to greet the Butterscotch Man

and pry open his fingers

like the sun on Kashmiri flowers

to see what he’s got in his hand

that would taste like love on the native tongue

of any land as wise and old

and as compassionate as his forever is.

Or as ours was then

unfeelingly young by ten.

So thank you.

Thank-you from all the children of when

the world was a shabbier place

than this homelessness of now

but somehow you always managed

to corner a little kind place for each of us

in that spacious heart

that seemed to understand

how to stand forever before us

in a turban of snow

like a sacred mountain

in the body of an ageing holy man

as if the deepest secret of life

were as childishly simple

as a hardrock candy in the open hand

of the Butterscotch Man in a turban.

PATRICK WHITE