Coconut Milk

Fa‘a Fafine Poem Number Fifteen

57 Fa‘a Fafine Poem Number Fifteen Midnight mass, Christmas Eve, the cathedral in Tafuna, Tutuila island American Samoa Invited by my Aunt L and her daughters my cousins, white lace covering their hair Outside the church a group of ancient white priests from who knows where paraded in procession bent covert bodies in elaborate robes They were preceded and followed by about forty Samoan altar boys in scant mini skirt lavalava wrapped around their waists with nothing else barefoot, shiny bodies covered in coconut oil, carrying tall candles It was a Roman scene like the ink drawings of Aubrey Beardsley During the service the white Archbishop of the South Pacific spoke in Samoan with an aesthete voice looking and sounding like Peter Cook imitating the Archbishop of Canterbury he sermoned in a tongue wrinkled and powdered ...