<ondaatje's "sweet like a crow"> 2002-11-25.3:11 p.m. Sweet Like A Crow Michael Ondaatje for Hetti Corea, 8 years old Your voice sounds like a scorpion being pushed through a glass tube like someone has just trod on a peacock like wind howling in a coconut like a rusty bible, like someone pulling barbed wire across a stone courtyard, like a pig drowning, a vattacka being fried a bone shaking hands a frog singing at Carnegie Hall. Like a crow swimming in milk, like a nose being hit by a mango like the crowd at the Royal-Thomian match, a womb full of twins, a pariah dog with a magpie in its mouth like the midnight jet from Casablanca like Air Pakistan curry, a typewriter on fire, like a hundred pappadams being crunched, like someone trying to light matches in a dark room, the clicking sound of a reef when you put your head into the sea, a dolphin reciting epic poetry to a sleepy audience, the sound of a fan when someone throws brinjals at it, like pineapples being sliced in the Pettah market like betel juice hitting a butterfly in mid-air like a whole village running naked onto the street and tearing their sarongs, like an angry family pushing a jeep out of the mud, like dirt on the needle, like 8 sharks being carried on the back of a bicycle like 3 old ladies locked in the lavatory like the sound I heard when having an afternoon sleep and someone walked through my room in ankle bracelets. back /& forth /& frosting names are often sad