Manaviko

At sunrise the sky opens blue
above the village street,

not all at once,
but in pale strips,
as if someone has taken a knife
to the dark
and let the morning through.

A rooster tears the quiet.
Another answers from farther off.
Then the truck comes,
low-geared and coughing,
rounding the bend
with its headlights still on,

a blunt old animal
bringing the day’s necessities
before the day
has properly begun.

Across the street,
a key turns in the door.

The lock gives.
The shutter rises.
A man clears his throat,
laughs at something
no one else has heard,
and steps into the cool,
unlit shop.

Then the back gate drops
with a chain-rattle.

Box after box comes down:
eggplants dark as bruised bells,
potatoes still carrying earth,
carrots with their green tops damp,
lettuce folded in on itself
like something sleeping,

onions in their papery skins,
lemons bright as small suns,
tomatoes, cucumbers,
parsley, basil,
milk in white cartons,
wine in its green glass,

and all the smaller things
by which a day agrees
to continue.

Salt.
Bread.
Soap.
Coffee.
Matches.
Bottles of water sweating
before the heat has even arrived.

The men lift and turn,
bend and straighten,
speaking in half sentences,
names, prices, jokes,
news from another village,
a cousin’s child,
a broken pump,
the wedding next month,
the storm that did not come.

Their hands know the work
better than their mouths do.

The crates scrape the pavement.
The dolly knocks against the step.
Somewhere a dog barks once
and decides against the effort
of barking again.

Inside, the manaviko fills itself
row by row.

Potatoes low in their bins.
Fruit stacked carefully,
not because it will last,
but because beauty matters
even for things that bruise.

The eggplants gleam.
The tomatoes lean into one another.
The onions gather
their dry gold around them.

Nothing here is grand,
and nothing here is useless.

By eight, the first woman comes
with a cloth bag
folded inside another bag.
She touches three tomatoes
before choosing two.

A boy is sent for milk
and returns with chocolate,
because childhood
has its own accounting.

An old man buys one lemon,
one onion,
a small loaf of bread,
and stands a moment longer
than he needs to,

as if the shop itself
were a kind of company.

All morning the door opens.

A bell, perhaps.
Or only the scrape of sandals.
The quick exchange of coins.
The soft thud of fruit
placed on a scale.

How much?
Enough for today.
A little more.
My sister is coming.
The children are hungry.
We are going to the beach.
We will eat outside tonight.

And so the day travels
from shelf to hand,
from hand to bag,
from bag to kitchen,
from kitchen to table,

to knives and boards,
to oil in a pan,
to water beginning to boil,
to smoke rising from a grill
behind a whitewashed wall.

By noon these things
will have gone everywhere:

to the beach in paper sacks,
to rooms where fans turn slowly,
to shaded patios,
to tables under grape leaves,
to stone steps where someone sits
cutting the ends from beans,

to be washed, cut, salted,
boiled, fried, grilled,
peeled by a thumb,
split by a knife,
handed from one person to another
without ceremony.

This is how a village eats.
This is how the morning
becomes the afternoon.

Not by miracle,
unless this is miracle:
the truck arriving,
the key turning,
the crates descending,
the shelves made ready,
the hands that lift
what others will carry home.

Toward evening
the light changes again.

The street goes amber.
The heat loosens its grip.
A motorbike passes.
Someone calls from a balcony.
The smell of garlic
finds the open air.

The man in the manaviko
stands in the doorway
with his arms folded,
watching what remains of the day
move past him.

Inside, the shelves are altered.

A gap where the lettuce was.
Fewer tomatoes.
The potatoes lowered
like a tide going out.
One bruised peach
left behind in its own sweetness.

A day’s work,
and nearly all of it hidden.

No one praises the lifting.
No one blesses the boxes.
No one remembers the truck
once dinner is on the table.

But the dawn saw it whole:

the blue sky opening,
the rooster,
the key in the door,
the men laughing,
the gate lowered,
the first crate lifted down,

and the village,
hungry and ordinary,
beginning again.