under a marble asylum
my absolute flight snarled like old fishing line:
What will I have in my head
to serve against logic brotherhood destiny?
WHY EXPERIENCE IS NO TEACHER
Not mine – the body you were promised
is buried at the heart
of an unusable machine
no one can stop or start.
You’ll lie with it? You might dig deep –
escape a Law or two – see a dart
of light. You
won’t get near the heart.
I tried – I am the same – come the same.
I wanted my senses to rave.
The dart was ordinary light.
Will nothing keep you here, my love, my love?
FOR MY OLD LAYTON
His pain, unowned, he left
in paragraphs of love, hidden,
like a cat leaves shit
under stones, and he crept out in day,
clean, arrogant, swift, prepared
to hunt or sleep or starve.
The town saluted him with garbage
which he interpreted as praise
for his muscular grace. Orange peels,
cans, discarded guts rained like ticker-tape.
For a while he ruined their nights
by throwing his shadow in moon-full windows
as he spied on the peace of gentle folk.
Once he envied them. Now with a happy
screech he bounded from monument to monument
in their most consecrated plots, drunk
to know how close he lived to the breathless
in the ground, drunk to feel how much he loved
the snoring mates, the old, the children of the town.
Until at last, like Timon, tired
of human smell, resenting even
his own shoe-steps in the wilderness,
he chased animals, wore live snakes, weeds
for bracelets. When the sea
pulled back the tide like a blanket
he slept on stone cribs, heavy,
dreamless, the salt-bright atmosphere
like an automatic laboratory
building crystals in his hair.
THE ONLY TOURIST IN HAVANA
TURNS HIS THOUGHTS HOMEWARD
Come, my brothers,
let us govern Canada,
let us find our serious heads,
let us dump asbestos on the White House,
let us make the French talk English,
not only here but everywhere,
let us torture the Senate individually
until they confess,
let us purge the New Party,
let us encourage the dark races
so they’ll be lenient
when they take over,
let us make the CBC talk English,
let us all lean in one direction
and float down
to the coast of Florida,
let us have tourism,
let us flirt with the enemy,
let us smelt pig-iron in our backyards,
let us sell snow
to under-developed nations,
(Is it true one of our national leaders
was a Roman Catholic?)
let us terrorize Alaska,
let us unite
Church and State,
let us not take it lying down,
let us have two Governor Generals
at the same time,
let us have another official language,
let us determine what it will be,
let us give a Canada Council Fellowship
to the most original suggestion,
let us teach sex in the home
to parents,
let us threaten to join the U.S.A.
and pull out at the last moment,
my brothers, come,
our serious heads are waiting for us somewhere
like Gladstone bags abandoned
after a coup d’état,
let us put them on very quickly,
let us maintain a stony silence
on the St. Lawrence Seaway.
Havana
April 1961
THE INVISIBLE TROUBLE
Too fevered to insist:
“My world is terror,”
he covers his wrist
and numbers of the war.
His arm is unburned
his flesh whole:
the numbers he learned
from a movie reel.
He covers his wrist
under the table.
The drunkards have missed
his invisible trouble.
A tune rises up.
His skin is blank!
He can’t lift his cup
he can’t! he can’t!
The chorus grows.
So does his silence.
Nothing, he knows
there is nothing to notice.
SICK ALONE
Nursery giant hordes return
wading in the clue taste of bile
You ate too much kitchen
went green on the lone looptheloop
It will not let you off to sleep
It is too fast It is too steep
Crash past a squashed group
of bible animals lion child kitten
Where where is your demonic smile
You vomit when you want to burn
MILLENNIUM
This could be my little
book about love
if I wrote it –
but my good demon said:
“Lay off documents!”
Everybody was watching me
burn my books –
I swung my liberty torch
happy as a gestapo brute;
the only thing I wanted to save
was a scar
a burn or two –
but my good demon said:
“Lay off documents!
The fire’s not important!”
The pile was safely blazing.
I went home to take a bath.
I phoned my grandmother.
She is suffering from arthritis.
“Keep well,” I said, “don’t mind the pain.”
“You neither,” she said.
Hours later I wondered
did she mean
don’t mind my pain
or don’t mind her pain?
Whereupon my good demon said:
“Is that all you can do?”
Well was it?
Was it all I could do?
There was the old lady
eating alone, thinking about
Prince Albert, Flanders Field,
Kishenev, her fingers too sore
for TV knobs;
but how could I get there?
The books were gone
my address lists –
My good demon said again:
“Lay off documents!
You know how to get there!”
And suddenly I did!
I remembered it from memory!
I found her
pouring over the royal family tree,
“Grandma,”
I almost said,
“you’ve got it upside down –”
“Take a look,” she said,
“it only goes to George V.”
“That’s far enough
you sweet old blood!”
“You’re right!” she sang
and burned the
London Illustrated Souvenir
I did not understand
the day it was
till I looked outside
and saw a fire in every
window on the street
and crowds of humans
crazy to talk
and cats and dogs and birds
smiling at each other!
HITLER THE BRAIN-MOLE
Hitler the brain-mole looks out of my eyes
Goering boils ingots of gold in my bowels
My Adam’s Apple bulges with the whole head of Goebbels
No use to tell a man he’s a Jew
I’m making a lampshade out of your kiss
Confess! confess!
is what you demand
although you believe you’re giving me everything
DEATH OF A LEADER
Anxious to break a journey’s back,
dismiss itself in ash,
the sun invaded noon:
like a bomb seen
falling from below
it widened its circumference
in the middle of the sky.
He stood on his shadow
Like a dead sundial.
Children hunting a balloon
beside a monument
blended with the figures
striving on the pedestal.
Clash of gold and light
etched the Capitol dome in black.
His speeches returned,
his hours of applause,
weight of foreign medals,
white clothes of too many summers,
girls with whom he shared his power
now old and powerful.
His strategies returned
diagrammed like a geodesic sphere,
He balanced them on his forehead
weaving like a seal.
He was heavy and hot.
He’d had enough.
Let his colleagues
balance the state.
They were so distinguished
eagle-like, silver-grey.
Let him fall where his shoes were,
where his striped trousers led,
where the dove-coloured waistcoat pointed:
let him fall down in the sun.
He fell near the balloon.
Children hushed back
as if their toy
could catch the disease.
Secret Service men,
ex-athletes chosen for their height,
made a ring around the body.
At attention they
