Selected Poems, 1956-1968 Read online

  away but cannot. She stares, dumbfounded, shattered, and ashamed.)

  CoLLEcToR: We learn to get around, don't we?

  MARY: It's very nice. (She switches off the machine.)

  CoLLECTOR: That's more what they're doing.

  MARY : Is it?

  CoLLECTOR: In most of the places. A few haven't

  caught on.

  MARY: I'm very tired now. I think-

  CoLLEcToR: You must be tired.

  MARY: I am.

  CoLLEcToR: With all my talking.

  MARY: Not really.

  CoLLECTOR: I've taken your time.

  MARY: You haven't.

  CoLLECTOR: I'll write you a receipt.

  MARY: It isn't necessary.

  COLLECTOR: Yes it is. (She writes.) This isn't official.

  An official receipt will be mailed to you

  from Fund headquarters. You'll need it

  for Income Tax.

  MARY: Thank you.

  CoLLECTOR: Thank you. I've certainly enjoyed this.

  MARY: Me too. (She is now confirmed in a state

  of numbed surrender.)

  CoLLECTOR (with a sudden disarming tenderness that

  changes through the speech into a vision

  of uncompromising domination): No,

  you didn't. Oh, I know you didn't. It

  frightened you. It made you sort of sick.

  It had to frighten you. It always does at

  the beginning. Everyone is frightened at

  I 157

  the beginning. That's part of it. Frightened and-fascinated. Fascinated-that's

  the important thing. You were fascinated

  too, and that's why I know you'll learn

  the new step. You see, it's a way to start

  over and forget about all the things you

  were never really good at. Nobody can

  resist that, can they? That's why you'll

  learn the new step. That's why I must

  teach you. And soon you'll want to learn.

  Everybody will want to learn. We'll be

  teaching everybody.

  MARY: I'm fairly busy.

  CoLLECTOR: Don't worry about that. We'll find time.

  We'll make time. You won't believe this

  now, but soon, and it will be very soon,

  you're going to want me to teach you

  everything. Well, you better get some

  sleep. Sleep is very important. I want to

  say thank you. All the Obese want to

  say thank you.

  MARY: Nothing. Good night.

  CoLLECTOR: Just beginning for us.

  (Exit THE CoLLECTOR. MARY, dazed and

  exhausted, stands at the door for some

  time. She moves toward stage centre,

  attempts a few elementary exercises, collapses into the chair and stares dumbly

  at the audience. The sound of a key in

  the lock. Door opens. Enter DIANE alone,

  crying.)

  DIANE: I didn't want him to see me home.

  (MARY is unable to cope with anyone

  else's problem at this point.)

  MARY: What's the matter with your

  DIANE: It's impossible.

  MARY: What's impossible?

  DIANE: What happened.

  MARY: What happened?

  DIANE: He doesn't want to see me any more.

  MARY: Harry?

  DIANE: Harry.

  MARY: Your Harry?

  DIANE: You know damn well which Harry.

  MARY: Doesn't want to see you any morer

  DIANE: No.

  MARY: I thought he loved you.

  DIANE: So did I.

  MARY: I thought he really loved you.

  DIANE: So did I.

  MARY: You told me he said he loved you.

  DIANE: He did.

  MARY: But now he doesn't?

  DIANE: No.

  MARY: Oh.

  DIANE: It's terrible.

  MARY : It must be.

  DIANE: It came so suddenly.

  MARY: It must have.

  DIANE: I thought he loved me.

  MARY: So did I.

  DIANE:· He doesn't!

  MARY : Don't cry.

  DIANE: He's getting married.

  MARY: He isn't!

  DIANE: Yes.

  MARY: He isn't!

  DIANE: This Sunday.

  I 159

  MARY: This Sunday?

  DIANE: Yes.

  MARY: So soon?

  DIANE: Yes.

  MARY: He told you that?

  DIANE: Tonight.

  MARY: What did he say?

  DIANE: He said he's getting married this Sunday.

  MARY : He's a bastard.

  DIANE: Don't say that.

  MARY: I say he's a bastard.

  DIANE: Don't talk that way.

  MARY: Why not?

  DIANE: Don't.

  MARY: After what he's done?

  DIANE: It's not his fault.

  MARY: Not his fault?

  DIANE: He fell in love.

  (The word has its magic effect.)

  MARY: Fell in love?

  DIANE: Yes.

  MARY: With someone else?

  DIANE: Yes.

  MARY: He fell out of love with you?

  DIANE: I suppose so.

  MARY: That's terrible.

  DIANE: He said he couldn't help it.

  MARY: Not if it's love.

  DIANE: He said it was.

  MARY: Then he couldn't help it.

  (DIANE begins to remove her make-up

  and undress, reversing exactly every step

  of her toilet. MARY, still bewildered, but

  out of habit, assists her.)

  16o 1

  MARY: And you're so beautiful.

  DIANE: No.

  MARY: Your hair.

  DIANE: No.

  MARY: Your shoulders.

  DIANE: No.

  MARY: Everything.

  (Pause.)

  MARY: What did he say?

  DIANE: He told me everything.

  MARY: Such as what?

  DIANE: Harry's a gentleman.

  MARY: I always thought so.

  DIANE: He wanted me to know everything.

  MARY: It's only fair.

  DIANE: He told me about her.

  MARY: What did he say?

  DIANE: He said he loves her.

  MARY: Then he had no choice.

  DIANE: He said she's beautiful.

  MARY: He didn't!

  DIANE: What can you expect?

  MARY: I suppose so.

  DIANE: He loves her, after all.

  MARY: Then I guess he thinks she's beautiful.

  (Pause.)

  MARY: What else did he say?

  DIANE: He told me everything.

  MARY: How did he meet her?

  DIANE: She came to his house.

  MARY: What for?

  DIANE: She was collecting money.

  MARY: Money! (Alarm.)

  DIANE: For a charity.

  MARY: Charity!

  DIANE: Invalids of some kind.

  MARY: Invalids!

  DIANE: That's the worst part.

  MARY: What part?

  DIANE: She's that way herself.

  MARY: What way?

  DIANE: You know.

  MARY: What way, what way?

  DIANE: You know.

  MARY: Say it!

  DIANE: She's an invalid.

  MARY: Harry's marrying an invalid?

  DIANE: This Sunday.

  MARY : You said he said she was beautiful.

  DIANE: He did.

  MARY: Harry is going to marry an invalid.

  DIANE: What should I do?

  MARY: Harry who said he loved you. (Not a

  question.)

  DIANE: I'm miserable.

  (MARY is like a woman moving through

  a fog toward a light
.)

  MARY: Harry is going to marry an invalid. He

  thinks she's beautiful.

  (MARY switches on the record·player.) She

  came to his door. Harry who told you he

  loved you. You who told me I had my

  points.

  ("The Dance of the Sugar-plum Fairy"

  begins. MARY dances but she does not use

  the steps she learned at the YWCA . She

  dances in conscious imitation of THE

  COLLECTOR.)

  DIANE: What are you doing? (Horrified.)

  (MARY smiles at her.)

  DIANE: Stop it! Stop it this instant!

  MARY: Don't tell me what to do. Don't you dare.

  Don't ever tell me what to do. Don't ever.

  (The dance continues. DIANE, dressed in

  bra and panties as at the beginning,

  backs away.)

  CURTAIN

  W I N T E R B U L L E T I N

  Toronto has been good to me

  I relaxed on Tv

  I attacked several dead horses

  I spread rumours about myself

  I reported a Talmudic quarrel

  with the Montreal Jewish Community

  I forged a death certificate

  in case I had to disappear

  I listened to a huckster

  welcome me to the world

  I slept behind my new sunglasses

  I abandoned the care of my pimples

  I dreamed that I needed nobody

  I faced my trap

  I withheld my opinion on matters

  on which I had no opinion

  I humoured the rare January weather

  with a jaunty step for the sake of heroism

  Not very carefully

  I thought about the future

  and how little I know about animals

  The future seemed unnecessarily black and strong

  as if it had received my casual mistakes

  through a carbon sheet

  W H Y D I D Y O U G I V E M Y N A M E

  T O T H E P O L I C E ?

  You recited the Code of Comparisons

  in your mother's voice.

  Again you were the blue-robed seminary girl

  but these were not poplar trees and nuns

  you walked between.

  These were Laws.

  Damn you for making this moment hopeless,

  now, as a clerk in uniform fills

  in my father's name.

  You too must find the moment hopeless

  in the Tennyson Hotel.

  I know your stomach.

  The brass bed bearing your suitcase

  rumbles away like an automatic

  promenading target in a shooting gallery:

  you stand with your hands full

  of a necklace you wanted to pack.

  In detail you recall your rich dinner.

  Grab that towel rack!

  Doesn't the sink seem a fraud

  with its hair-swirled pipes?

  Doesn't the overhead bulb

  seem burdened with mucus?

  Things will be better at City Hall.

  Now you must learn to read

  newspapers without laughing.

  No hysterical headline breakfasts.

  Police be your Guard,

  Telephone Book your Brotherhood.

  Action! Action! Action!

  Goodbye Citizen.

  The clerk is talking to nobody.

  Do you see how I have tiptoed

  out of his brown file?

  He lingers his uniform

  like a cheated bargain hunter.

  Answer me, please talk to me, he weeps,

  say I'm not a doorman.

  I plug the wires of your fear

  (ah, this I was always meant to do)

  into the lust-asylum universe:

  raped by aimless old electricity

  you stiffen over the steel books of your bed

  like a fish

  in a liquid air experiment.

  Thus withers the Civil Triumph

  (Laws rush in to corset the collapse)

  for you are mistress to the Mayor,

  he electrocuted in your frozen juices.

  166 1

  T H E M U S I C C R E P T B Y U S

  I would like to remind

  the management

  that the drinks are watered

  and the hat-check girl

  has syphilis

  and the band is composed

  of former SS monsters

  However since it is

  New Year's Eve

  and I have lip cancer

  I will place my

  paper hat on my

  concussion and dance

  D I S G U I S E S

  I am sorry that the rich man must go

  and his house become a hospital.

  I loved his wine, his contemptuous servants,

  his ten-year-old ceremonies.

  I loved his car which he wore like a snail's shell

  everywhere, and I loved his wife,

  the hours she put into her skin,

  the milk, the lust, the industries

  that served her complexion.

  I loved his son who looked British

  but had American ambitions

  and let the word aristocrat comfort him

  like a reprieve while Kennedy reigned.

  I loved the rich man: I hate to see

  his season ticket for the Opera

  fall into a pool for opera-lovers.

  I am sorry that the old worker must go

  who called me mister when I was twelve

  and sir when I was twenty

  who studied against me in obscure socialist

  clubs which met in restaurants.

  I loved the machine he knew like a wife's body.

  I loved his wife who trained bankers

  in an underground pantry

  and never wasted her ambition in ceramics.

  I loved his children who debate

  and come first at McGill University.

  Goodbye old gold-watch winner

  all your complex loyalties

  must now be borne by one-faced patriots.

  168 1

  Goodbye dope fiends of North Eastern Lunch

  circa 1948, your spoons which were not

  Swedish Stainless, were the same colour

  as the hoarded clasps and hooks

  of discarded soiled therapeutic corsets.

  I loved your puns about snow

  even if they lasted the full seven-month

  Montreal winter. Go write your memoirs

  for the Psychedelic Review.

  Goodbye sex fiends of Beaver Pond

  who dreamed of being jacked-off

  by electric milking machines.

  You had no Canada Council.

  You had to open little boys

  with a pen-knife.

  I loved your statement to the press:

  "I didn't think he'd mind."

  Goodbye articulate monsters

  Abbott and Costello have met Frankenstein.

  I am sorry that the conspirators must go

  the ones who scared me by showing me

  a list of all the members of my family.

  I loved the way they reserved judgement

  about Genghis Khan. They loved me because

  I told them their little beards

  made them dead-ringers for Lenin.

  The bombs went off in Westmount

  and now they are ashamed

  like a successful outspoken Schopenhauerian

  whose room-mate has committed suicide.

  Suddenly they are all making movies.

  I have no one to buy coffee for.

  I I6g

  I embrace the changeless:

  the committed men in public wards

  oblivious as Hassidim

  who believe that they are some
one else.

  Bravo! Abelard, viva! Rockefeller,

  have these buns, Napoleon,

  hurrah! betrayed Duchess.

  Long live you chronic self-abusers!

  you monotheists!

  you familiars of the Absolute

  sucking at circles!

  You are all my comfort

  as I turn to face the beehive

  as I disgrace my style

  as I coarsen my nature

  as I invent jokes

  as I pull up my garters

  as I accept responsibility.

  You comfort me

  incorrigible betrayers of the self

  as I salute fashion

  and bring my mind

  like a promiscuous air-hostess

  handing out parachutes in a nose dive

  bring my butchered mind

  to bear upon the facts.

  L O T

  Give me back my house

  Give me back my young wife

  I shouted to the sunflower in my path

  Give me back my scalpel

  Give me back my mountain view

  I said to the seeds along my path

  Give me back my name

  Give me back my childhood list

  I whispered to the dust when the path gave out

  Now sing

  Now sing

  sang my master as I waited in the raw wind

  Have I come so far for this

  I wondered as I waited in the pure cold

  ready at last to argue for my silence

  Tell me master

  do my lips move

  or where does it come from

  this soft total chant that drives my soul

  like a spear of salt into the rock

  Give me back my house

  Give me back my young wife

  O N E O F T H E N I G H T S I

  D I D N ' T K I L L M Y S E L F

  You dance on the day you saved

  my theoretical angels

  daughters of the new middle-class

  who wear your mouths like Bardot

  Come my darlings

  the movies are true

  I am the lost sweet singer whose death

  in the fog your new high-heeled boots

  have ground into cigarette butts

  I was walking the harbour this evening

  looking for a 25-cent bed of water

  but I will sleep tonight

  with your garters curled in my shoes

  like rainbows on vacation

  with your virginity ruling

  the condom cemeteries like a 2nd chance

  I believe I believe

  Thursday December 1 2th

  is not the night

  and I will kiss again the slope of a breast

  little nipple above me

  like a sunset

  B U L L E T S

  Listen all you bullets

  that never hit:

  a lot of throats are growing

  in open collars

  like frozen milk bottles

  on a 5 a.m. street

  throats that are waiting

  for bite scars

  but will settle

  for bullet holes