Selected Poems, 1956-1968 Read online

The spike hunts

  constant as a compass.

  You smile like a Navajo

  discovering American oil

  on his official slum wilderness,

  a surprise every hal£ hour.

  I'm afraid I sometimes forget

  my lady's pretty little blond package

  is an amateur time-bomb

  set to fizzle in my middle-age.

  I forget the Ice Cap, the pea-minds,

  the heaps of expensive teeth.

  You don a false nose

  line up twice for the Demerol dole;

  you step out of a tourist group

  shoot yoursel£ on the steps of the White House,

  you try to shoot the big arms

  of the Lincoln Memorial;

  through a flaw in their lead houses

  you spy on scientists,

  stumble on a cure for scabies;

  you drop pamphlets from a stolen jet:

  "The Truth about Junk";

  you pirate a national TV commercial

  shove your face against

  the window of the living-room

  insist that healthy skin is grey.

  I 109

  A little blood in the sink

  Red cog-wheels

  shaken from your arm

  punctures inflamed

  like a roadmap showing cities

  over IO,ooo pop.

  Your arms tell me

  you have been reaching into the coke machine

  for strawberries,

  you have been humping the thorny crucifix

  you have been piloting Mickey Mouse balloons

  through the briar patch,

  you have been digging for grins in the tooth-pile.

  Bonnie Queen Alex Eludes Montreal Hounds

  Famous Local Love Scribe Implicated

  Your purity drives me to work.

  I must get back to lust and microscopes,

  experiments in embalming,

  resume the census of my address book.

  You leave behind you a fanatic

  to answer RCMP questions.

  1 1 0 1

  T H R E E G O O D N I G H T S

  Out of some simple part of me

  which I cannot use up

  I took a blessing for the flowers

  tightening in the night

  like fists of jealous love

  like knots

  no one can undo without destroying

  The new morning gathered me

  in blue mist

  like dust under a wedding gown

  Then I followed the day

  like a cloud of heavy sheep

  after the judas

  up a blood-ringed ramp

  into the terror of every black building

  Ten years sealed journeys unearned dreams

  Laughter meant to tempt me into old age

  spilled for friends stars unknown flesh mules sea

  Instant knowledge of bodies material and spirit

  which slowly learned would have made death smile

  Stories turning into theories

  which begged only for the telling and retelling

  Girls sailing over the blooms of my mouth

  with a muscular triangular kiss

  ordinary mouth to secret mouth

  Nevertheless my homage sticky flowers

  rabbis green and red serving the sun like platters

  In the end you offered me the dogma you taught

  me to disdain and I good pupil disdained it

  I fell under the diagrammed fields like the fragment

  of a perfect statue layers of cities build upon

  I I l l

  I saw you powerful I saw you happy

  that I could not live only for harvesting

  that I was a true citizen of the slow earth

  Light and Splendour

  in the sleeping orchards

  entering the trees

  like a silent movie wedding procession

  entering the arches of branches

  for the sake of love only

  From a hill I watched

  the apple blossoms breathe

  the silver out of the night

  like fish eating the spheres

  of air out of the river

  So the illumined night fed

  the sleeping orchards

  entering the vaults of branches

  like a holy procession

  Long live the Power of Eyes

  Long live the invisible steps

  men can read on a mountain

  Long live the unknown machine

  or heart

  which by will or accident

  pours with victor's grace

  endlessly perfect weather

  on the perfect creatures

  the world grows

  Montreal

  july 1964

  1 12 1

  O N T H E S I C K N E S S O F M Y L O V E

  Poems! break out!

  break my head!

  What good's a skull?

  Help! help!

  I need you!

  She is getting old.

  Her body tells her everything.

  She has put aside cosmetics.

  She is a prison of truth.

  Make her get upl

  dance the seven veils!

  Poems! silence her body!

  Make her friend of mirrors!

  Do I have to put on my cape?

  wander like the moon

  over skies & skies of flesh

  to depart again in the morning?

  Can't I pretend

  she grows prettier?

  be a convict?

  Can't my power fool me?

  Can't I live in poems?

  Hurry upl poems! lies!

  Damn your weak music!

  You've let arthritis inl

  You're no poem

  you're a visa.

  I 1 13

  F O R M A R I A N N E

  It's so simple

  to wake up beside your ears

  and count the pearls

  with my two heads

  It takes me back to blackboards

  and I'm running with Jane

  and seeing the dog run

  It makes it so easy

  to govern this country

  I've already thought up the laws

  I'll work hard all day

  in Parliament

  Then let's go to bed

  right after supper

  Let's sleep and wake up

  all night

  T H E F A I L U R E O F A S E C U L A R L I F E

  The pain-monger came home

  from a hard day's torture.

  He came home with his tongs.

  He put down his black bag.

  His wife hit him with an open nerve

  and a cry the trade never heard.

  He watched her real-life Dachau,

  knew his career was ruined.

  Was there anything else to do?

  He sold his bag and tongs,

  went to pieces. A man's got to be able

  to bring his wife something.

  I us

  M Y M E N T O R S

  My rabbi has a silver buddha,

  my priest has a jade talisman.

  My doctor sees a marvellous omen

  in our prolonged Indian summer.

  My rabbi, my priest stole their trinkets

  from shelves in the holy of holies.

  The trinkets cannot be eaten.

  They wonder what to do with them.

  My doctor is happy as a pig

  although he is dying of exposure.

  He has finished his big book

  on the phallus as a phallic symbol.

  My zen master is a grand old fool.

  I caught him worshipping me yesterday,

  so I made him stand in a foul corner

  with my rabbi, my priest, and my doctor.

  u6 1

>   H E I R L O O M

  The torture scene developed under a glass bell

  such as might protect an expensive clock.

  I almost expected a chime to sound

  as the tongs were applied

  and the body jerked and fainted calm.

  All the people were tiny and rosy-cheeked

  and if I could have heard a cry of triumph or pain

  it would have been tiny as the mouth that made it

  or one single note of a music box.

  The drama bell was mounted

  like a gigantic baroque pearl

  on a wedding ring or brooch or locket.

  I know you feel naked, little darling.

  I know you hate living in the country

  and can't wait until the shiny magazines

  come every week and every month.

  Look through your grandmother's house again.

  There is an heirloom somewhere.

  I 1 17

  T H E P R O J E C T

  Evidently they need a lot of blood for these tests. I let

  them take all they wanted. The hospital was cool and its

  atmosphere of order encouraged me to persist in my own

  projects.

  I always wanted to set fire to your houses. I've been in

  them. Through the front doors and the back. I'd like to see

  them burn slowly so I could visit many and peek in the

  falling windows. I'd like to see what happens to those white

  carpets you pretended to be so careless about. I'd like to

  see a white telephone melting.

  We don't want to trap too many inside because the streets

  have got to be packed with your poor bodies screaming back

  and forth. I'll be comforting. Oh dear, pyjama flannel seared

  right on to the flesh. Let me pull it off.

  It seems to me they took too much blood. Probably selling

  it on the side. The little man's white frock was smeared

  with blood. Little men like that keep company with blood.

  See them in abattoirs and assisting in human experiments.

  -When did you last expose yourself?

  -Sunday morning for a big crowd in the lobby of the

  Queen Elizabeth.

  -Funny. You know what I mean.

  -Expose myself to what?

  -A woman.

  -Ah.

  I narrowed my eyes and whispered in his yellow ear.

  -You better bring her in too.

  -And it's still free?

  Of course it was still free. Not counting the extra blood

  they stole. Prevent my disease from capturing the entire city.

  Help this man. Give him all possible Judea-Christian help.

  Fire would be best. I admit that. Tie firebrands between

  l iS I

  the foxes and chase them through your little gardens. A rosy

  sky would improve the view from anywhere. It would be a

  mercy. Oh, to see the roofs devoured and the beautiful old

  level of land rising again.

  The factory where I work isn't far from the hospital. Same

  architect as a matter of fact and the similarities don't end

  there. It's easier to get away with lying down in the hospital.

  However we have our comforts in the factory.

  The foreman winked at me when I went back to my

  machine. He loved his abundant nature. Me new at the job

  and he'd actually given me time off. I really enjoy the

  generosity of slaves. He came over to inspect my work.

  -But this won't do at all.

  -No?

  -The union said you were an experienced operator.

  -1 am. I am.

  -This is no seam.

  -Now that you mention it.

  -Look here.

  He took a fresh trouser and pushed in beside me on the

  bench. He was anxious to demonstrate the only skill he

  owned. He arranged the pieces under the needle. When he

  was halfway down the leg and doing very nicely I brought

  my foot down on the pedal beside his. The unexpected

  acceleration sucked his fingers under the needle.

  Another comfort is the Stock Room.

  It is large and dark and filled with bundles and rolls of

  material.

  -But shouldn't you be working?

  -No, Mary, I shouldn't.

  -Won't Sam miss you?

  -You see he's in the hospital. Accident.

  Mary runs the Cafeteria and the Boss exposes himself to

  her regularly. This guarantees her the concession.

  I 1 19

  I feel the disease raging in my blood. I expect my saliva

  to be discoloured.

  -Yes, Mary, real cashmere. Three hundred dollar suits.

  The Boss has a wife to whom he must expose himself

  every once in a while. She has her milkmen. The city is

  orderly. There are white bottles standing in front of a

  million doors. And there are Conventions. Multitudes of

  bosses sharing the pleasures of exposure.

  I shall go mad. They'll find me at the top of Mount Royal

  impersonating Genghis Khan. Seized with laughter and pus.

  -Very soft, Mary. That's what they pay for.

  Fire would be best. Flames. Bright windows. Two cars exploding in each garage. But could I ever manage it. This way is slower. More heroic in a way. Less dramatic of course.

  But I have an imagination.

  1 20 1

  H Y D R A 1 9 6 3

  The stony path coiled around me

  and bound me to the night.

  A boat hunted the edge of the sea

  under a hissing light.

  Something soft involved a net

  and bled around a spear.

  The blunt death, the cumulus jet-

  1 spoke to you, I thought you near!

  Or was the night so black

  that something died alone?

  A man with a glistening back

  beat the food against a stone.

  1 1 2 1

  A L L T H E R E I S T O K N O W

  A B O U T A D O L P H E I C H M A N N

  EYES:

  Medium

  HAIR:

  Medium

  WEIGHT:

  Medium

  HEIGHT:

  Medium

  DISTI NGUISHING FEATURES:

  None

  NUMBER OF FINGERS:

  Ten

  NUMBER OF TOES:

  Ten

  INTELLIGENCE:

  Medium

  What did you expect?

  Talons?

  Oversize incisors?

  Green saliva?

  Madness?

  122 1

  T H E N E W L E A D E R

  When he learned that his father had the oven contract,

  that the smoke above the city, the clouds as warm as skin,

  were his father's manufacture, he was freed from love, his

  emptiness was legalized.

  Hygienic as a whip his heart drove out the alibis of devotion, free as a storm-severed bridge, useless and pure as drowned alarm clocks, he breathed deeply, gratefully in the

  polluted atmosphere, and he announced: My father had

  the oven contract, he loved my mother and built her houses

  in the countryside.

  When he learned his father had the oven contract he

  climbed a hillock of eyeglasses, he stood on a drift of hair,

  he hated with great abandon the king cripples and their

  mothers, the husbands and wives, the familiar sleep, the

  decent burdens.

  Dancing down Ste Catherine Street he performed great

  surgery on a hotel of sleepers. The windows leaked like a

  broken meat fre
ezer. His hatred blazed white on the salted

  driveways. He missed nobody but he was happy he'd taken

  one hunded and fifty women in moonlight back in ancient

  history.

  He was drunk at last, drunk at last, after years of threading history's crushing daisy-chain with beauty after beauty.

  His father had raised the thigh-shaped clouds which smelled

  of salesmen, gipsies and violinists. With the certainty and

  genital pleasure of revelation he knew, he could not doubt,

  his father was the one who had the oven contract.

  Drunk at last, he hugged himself, his stomach clean, cold

  and drunk, the sky clean but only for him, free to shiver,

  free to hate, free to begin.

  I 123

  F O R E . J . P .

  I once believed a single line

  in a Chinese poem could change

  forever how blossoms fell

  and that the moon itself climbed on

  the grief of concise weeping men

  to journey over cups of wine

  I thought invasions were begun for uows

  to pick at a skeleton

  dynasties sown and spent

  to serve the language of a line lament

  I thought governors ended their lives

  as sweetly drunken monks

  telling time by rain and candles

  instructed by an insect's pilgrimage

  across the page-all this

  so one might send an exile's perfect letter

  to an ancient home-town friend

  I chose a lonely country

  broke from love

  scorned the fraternity of war

  I polished my tongue against the pumice moon

  floated my soul in cherry wine

  a perfumed barge for Lords of Memory

  to languish on to drink to whisper out

  their store of strength

  as if beyond the mist along the shore

  their girls their power still obeyed

  like clocks wound for a thousand years

  I waited until my tongue was sore

  1 24 I

  Brown petals wind like lire around my poems

  I aimed them at the stars but

  like rainbows they were bent

  before they sawed the world in half

  Who can trace the canyoned paths

  cattle have carved out of time

  wandering from meadowlands to feasts

  Layer after layer of autumn leaves

  are swept away

  Something forgets us perfectly

  I 1 25

  A M I G R A T I N G D I A L O G U E

  He was wearing a black moustache and leather hair.

  We talked about the gipsies.

  Don't bite your nails, I told him.

  Don't eat carpets.

  Be careful of the rabbits.

  Be cute.

  Don't stay up all night watching

  parades on the Very Very Very Late Show.

  Don't ka·ka in your uniform.

  And what about all the good generals,

  the line old aristocratic lighting men,

  the brave Junkers, the brave Rommels,