Lethal Colour

May 13 2015

If you were to judge a man by his shoes

they would be supple leather

under-stated

finely stitched.

Brogues, loafers, wing tips

in patent black

creamy brown.

Hand waxed, mirror finished,

as if the gloss

gleams all the way down.

But these were oxblood,

like the hard man

beneath his fine tailoring.

A knife plunged

into the sturdy neck

of a dumb lumbering bull.

The beast of burden’s liverish blood

spurting-out,

dark red

still hot.

Ox blood

does not wash out.

Only a man of means

would sacrifice his beast,

some thin-lipped patrician

stepping nimbly

around the spreading pool.

A silent killer, ice-pick cold

in immaculate shoes.

But the colour of blood

is continuous,

deepening with time

drying hard.

And I bleed the same

bright red.

If I ever meet a man

in oxblood

I will stand back, avert my eyes.

Defer

to the jackbooted fellow

in the steel-toed, hobnailed

darkly clotted shoes.

In the latest New Yorker (Many 18 2015) Malcolm Gladwell reviewed The Dark Art, the memoir of a retired DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) operative. Here's a quote he takes from the book: “He carried himself like a true Ibo prince: dignified, impeccably dressed in a tailored tan suit and gleamingly shined oxblood shoes ...” . "Oxblood" stopped me cold. For a fraction of a second, I had no idea what this meant. And when I recognized the colour, I couldn't resist its power: because what colour could possibly be more dangerous, violent, evocative? A woman's shoes would never be so described. And the sneakered, sandalled, and casually shod bourgeois masses of modern life would never wear oxblood; and if they did, it would go by any other name. I recently did a series on colour. So how could I possibly have done pink and orange, then miss the delicious possibilities of oxblood? In what frame of mind would one possibly come up with that name for a run-of-the-mill colour?

The ending was originally ...as if he wore jackboots,/ steel-toed/ soaked in blood. I went for the actual ending because hobnailed is such a delightful word. I not only imagine thuggish skinheads, I picture some kind of hobgoblin -- a deformed little devil figure. And because soaked in blood is a little too much, a little too explicit; implication is almost always better. And also because if the poem is about anything, it has more to do with the style of dress concealing the man than it does actual violence.

Of course, you can't judge a man by his shoes. His sense of fashion, yes; his vanity, yes as well. But as far as character and moral worth, it may very well be the opposite: the man oblivious to fashion probably has more worthwhile things on his mind. The Ibo prince was a drug lord. The wages of sin include impeccable tailoring.

(It was only after I finished the poem that I thought to look up "oxblood" in the dictionary. How disappointing: "a moderate reddish brown". I was hoping at least for a deep rich reddish brown. Oh well. Nevertheless, the dark sinister connotation of "oxblood" still works for me.)