The Woodcutter

from Chai: Travel Poems by Marc Nair feat. Neon & Wonder

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lyrics

The Woodcutter

Moktar Hossan Mokhul Hassan Farazze.
There is thunder in that name, rumbling down unpaved roads.
When he failed provincial exams for college at 18,
it rained all night in the village of his father, who
left him an early inheritance: a plane ticket to Singapore.

Moktar wears his safety helmet to pose for a picture,
afraid the camera would betray his carelessness.
He hefts the chainsaw like a gun. Bits of wood
curl and spit from the screaming teeth,
set on edge like an argument.

Far away from the mountains of his village, he stands
in a lesser forest, with no two hour naps after rice and dahl.
The sun is distant, like everyone outside his rented room
of dusky brothers. There is little here of home; no reed mat
to sleep on, woken by an arthritic rooster at 4 a.m.

He shudders with the saw’s recoil, as it bites the stump
with something less than respect. Moktar believes
this is the anger of cities, that machines are the colder face
of our hearts. Back home, he used circular saws, two men
pushing and pulling for hours with honest sweat.

And after, he counts the age of each felled tree,
each ring a mark of the years upon this eroding earth,
waiting for death. His wife is heavy with their fourth,
but money from one tree here is worth a hundred or more in Bangladesh. Strange how trees suffer the same fate as human labour.

Moktar Hossan Mokhul Hassan Farazze
lays his head on the still, warm road in the evening,
dreams of cups of chai brought by houris with the faces of his God
before the pick up truck from Soon Huat Landscaping Pte. Ltd returns, and he lays his saw to rest for the day.