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He keeps lemurs for pets. I
don’t mind as long as he
keeps them
in the bush behind the shed
amongst the
equatorial-looking flowers
which attract bees the size of
birds,
or they could be bees which have learnt
to whistle from
the camouflage of petals. He’s
not just a simian lover. I’ve
been with him
picking grapes and fishing for snapper and
digging for spuds and hiking over green limestone-
hollowed
hills. I’ve lived with him on the road
from London to Athens to
Auckland. For medicinal purposes,
we’ve eaten from certain
plants found
growing under trees. We’ve given MacIntosh
toffees
to Franciscan monks, given them bubble gum to
help them
salivate, to keep their prayers moist
and clean. He’s not
only a simian lover
full of anecdotes about Australo-
pithicus
and bipedals leaping down from
African forests, but he’s digitally
reliant on frequent shots
of chemically-induced humour. He’s
into
modern apartments, computerised music, synthetic
food.
Flashy colourations. He laughs at the most
inappropriate times
articulating the bones in his body as if he were
made of wires and
ready for lights to be
switched on. He encourages me to feel at ease,
be comfortable amongst
his lemurs,
appreciate them for what they are - who they might be -
for
he still believes in reincarnation. He leaps
enthusiastically into their environment
grunts, howls and grooms. He
loves his lemurs and composes songs for them -
high on
branches he sings - O how he sings.
Together we’ve done the
Soho thing, the Agora, the
Forum. We’ve seen the New Jerusalem in
the
contents of a gutter. We haven’t entirely forgotten
how to eat or just be together sitting at a table. I
respect
him for his idiosyncrasies, his courage, his
lunacy. I’ve learnt to
live with the longer silences.