perhaps a heart will catch rain
Nothing will heal and nothing will freeze
but perhaps a heart will catch rain
America will have no style
Russia will have no style
It is happening in the twenty eighth year
of my attention
I don’t know what will become
of the mules with their lady eyes
or the old clear water
or the giant rooster
The early morning greedy radio eats
the governments one by one the languages
the poppy fields one by one
Beyond the numbered band
a silence develops for every style
for the style I laboured on
an external silence like the space
between insects in a swarm
electric unremembering
and it is aimed at us
(I am sleepy and frightened)
it makes toward me brothers
GOEBBELS ABANDONS HIS NOVEL AND JOINS THE PARTY
His last love poem
broke in the harbour
where swearing blondes
loaded scrap
into rusted submarines.
Out in the sun
he was surprised
to find himself lustless
as a wheel.
More simple than money
he sat in some spilled salt
and wondered if he would find again
the scars of lampposts
ulcers of wrought iron fence.
He remembered perfectly
how he sprung
his father’s heart attack
and left his mother
in a pit
memory white from loss of guilt.
Precision in the sun
the elevators
the pieces of iron
broke whatever thous
his pain had left
like a whistle breaks
a gang of sweating men.
Ready to join the world
yes yes ready to marry
convinced pain a matter of choice
a Doctor of Reason
he began to count the ships
decorate the men.
Will dreams threaten
this discipline
will favourite hair favourite thighs
last life’s sweepstake winners
drive him to adventurous cafés?
Ah my darling pupils
do you think there exists a hand
so bestial in beauty so ruthless
that can switch off
his religious electric exlax light?
WHY COMMANDS ARE OBEYED
My father pulls the curtains: the Mother Goose wallpaper goes black. He insists the spaghetti is snakes and the bench a sheer cliff.
“Then why lead me, Father, if they are true snakes, if it is a sheer cliff?”
“Higher! Be brave!”
“But I was brave outside; yesterday, outside, I was very brave.”
“That? That was no ordeal. This is the ordeal, this familiar room where I say the bench is dangerous.”
“It’s true!” I shouted twenty years later, pulling him out of his dirty bed. “Poor little Father, you told me true.”
“Let me be. I am an old Father.”
“No! Lift up thy nose. The window is made of axes. What is that grey matter in the ashtrays? Not from cigarettes, I’ll bet. The living room is a case for relics!”
“Must I look?”
“I’ll say you must. One of your young, hardly remembered legs is lodged between the pillows of the chesterfield, decaying like food between teeth. This room is a case for stinking relics!”
Yes, yes, we wept down the Turkish carpet, entangled in the great, bloodwarm, family embrace, reconciled as the old story unfolded.
It happens to everyone. For those with eyes, who know in their hearts that terror is mutual, then this hard community has a beauty of its own.
Once upon a time my father pulls the curtains: the Mother Goose wallpaper goes black it began. We heard it in each other’s arms.
IT USES US!
Come upon this heap
exposed to camera leer:
would you snatch a skull
for midnight wine, my dear?
Can you wear a cape
claim these burned for you
or is this death unusable
alien and new?
In our leaders’ faces
(albeit they deplore
the past) can you read how
they love Freedom more?
In my own mirror
their eyes beam at me:
my face is theirs, my eyes
burnt and free.
Now you and I are mounted
on this heap, my dear:
from this height we thrill
as boundaries disappear.
Kiss me with your teeth.
All things can be done
whisper museum ovens of
a war that Freedom won.
THE FIRST MURDER
I knew it never happened
There was no murder in the field
The grass wasn’t red
The grass was green
I knew it never happened
I’ve come home tired
My boots are streaked with filth
What good to preach
it never happened
to the bodies murdered in the field
Tell the truth I’ve smoked myself
into love this innocent night
It never happened
It never happened
There was no murder in the field
There was a house on the field
The field itself was large and empty
It was night
It was dead of night
There were lights in the little windows
MY TEACHER IS DYING
Martha they say you are gentle
No doubt you labour at it
Why is it I see you
leaping into unmade beds
strangling the telephone
Why is it I see you
hiding your dirty nylons
in the fireplace
Martha talk to me
My teacher is dying
His laugh is already dead
that put cartilage
between the bony facts
Now they rattle loud
Martha talk to me
Mountain Street is dying
Apartment fifteen is dying
Apartment seven and eight are dying
All the rent is dying
Martha talk to me
I wanted all the dancers’ bodies
to inhabit like his old classroom
where everything that happened
was tender and important
Martha talk to me
Toss out the fake Jap silence
Scream in my kitchen
logarithms laundry lists anything
Talk to me
My radio is falling to pieces
My betrayals are so fresh
they still come with explanations
Martha talk to me
What sordid parable
do you teach by sleeping
Talk to me
for my teacher is dying
The cars are parked
on both sides of the street
some facing north
some facing south
I draw no conclusions
Martha talk to me
I could burn my desk
when I think how perfect we are
you asleep me finishing
the last of the Saint Emilion
Talk to me gentle Martha
dreaming of percussions massacres
hair pinned to the ceiling
I’ll keep your secret
Let’s tell the milkman
we have decided
to marry our rooms
MONTREAL 1964
Can someone turn off the noise?
Pearls rising on the breath of her breasts
grind like sharpening stones:
my fingernails wail as they grow their fraction
I think they want to be claws:
the bed fumes like a quicksand hole
we won’t climb on it for love:
the street yearns for action nobler than traffic
red lights want to be flags
policemen want their arms frozen in loud movies:
ask a man for the time
your voice is ruined with static:
What a racket! What strange dials!
Only Civil War can fuse it shut—
the mouth of the glorious impatient
ventriloquist performing behind our daily lives!
Canada is a dying animal
I will not be fastened to a dying animal
That’s the sort of thing to say, that’s good,
that will change my life.
And when my neighbour is broken for his error
and my blood guaranteed by Law against
an American failure
I dread the voice behind the flag I drew
on the blank sky
for my absolute poems
