and that you would not love me
I 223
I T ' S J U S T A C I T Y , D A R L I N G
It's just a city, darling,
everyone calls New York.
Wherever it is we meet
I can't go very far from.
I can't connect you with
anything but myself.
Half of the wharf is bleeding.
I'd give up anything to love you
and I don't even know what the list is
but one look into it
demoralizes me like a lecture.
If we are training each other for another love
what is it?
I only have a hunch
in what I've become expert.
Half of the wharf is bleeding,
it's the half where we always sleep.
224 I
E D M O N T O N , A L B E R T A ,
D E C E M B E R 1 9 6 6 , 4 A . M .
Edmonton, Alberta, December 1966, 4 a.m.
When did I stop writing you?
The sandalwood is on fire in this small hotel on Jasper
Street.
You've entered the room a hundred times
disguises of sari and armour and jeans,
and you sit beside me for hours
like a woman alone in a happy room.
I've sung to a thousand people
and I've written a small new song
I believe I will trust myself with the care of my soul.
I hope you have money for the winter.
I'll send you some as soon as I'm paid.
Grass and honey, the singing radiator,
the shadow of bridges on the ice
of the North Saskatchewan River,
the cold blue hospital of the sky-
it all keeps us such sweet company.
I 225
T H E B R O O M I S A N A R M Y O F S T R A W
The broom is an army of straw
or an automatic guitar,
The dust absorbs a changing chord
that the yawning dog can hear,
My truces have retired me
and the truces are at war.
Is this the house, Beloved,
is this the window sill where
I meet you face to face?
Are these the rooms, are these the walls,
is this the house that opens on the world?
Have you been loved in this disguise
too many times, ring of powder left behind
by teachers polishing their ecstasy?
Beloved of empty spaces
there is dew on the mirror:
can it nourish the bodies in the avalanche
the silver could not exhume?
Beloved of war,
am I obedient to a tune?
Beloved of my injustice,
is there anything to be won?
Summon me as I summon from this house
the mysteries of death and use.
Forgive me the claims I embrace.
Forgive me the claims I renounce.
226 1
I M E T Y O U
I met you
just after death
had become truly sweet
There you were
24 years old
Joan of Arc
I came after you
with all my art
with everything
you know I am a god
who needs to use your body
who needs to use your body
to sing about beauty
in a way no one
has ever sung before
you are mine
you are one of my last women
1 227
C A L M , A L O N E ,
T H E C E D A R G U I T A R
Calm, alone, the cedar guitar
tuned into a sunlight drone,
I'm here with sandalwood
and Patricia's clove pomander.
Thin snow carpets
on the roofs of Edmonton cars
prophesy the wilderness to come.
Downstairs in Swan's Cafe
the Indian girls are hunting
with their English names.
In Terry's Diner the counter man
plunges his tattoo in soapy water.
Don't fall asleep until your plan
includes every angry nomad.
The juke-box sings of service everywhere
while I work to renew the style
which models the apostles
on these friends whom I have known.
22B 1
Y O U L I V E L I K E A G O D
You live like a god
somewhere behind the names
I have for you,
your body made of nets
my shadow's tangled in,
your voice perfect and imperfect
like oracle petals
in a herd of daisies.
You honour your own god
with mist and avalanche
but all I have
is your religion of no promises
and monuments falling
like stars on a field
where you said you never slept.
Shaping your fingernails
with a razorblade
and reading the work
like a Book of Proverbs
no man will ever write for you,
a discarded membrane
of the voice you use
to wrap your silence in
drifts down the gravity between us,
and some machinery
of our daily life
prints an ordinary question in i t
like the Lord's Prayer raised
on a rollered penny.
Even before I begin to answer you
I know you won't be listening.
We're together in a room,
I 229
it's an evening in October,
no one is writing our history.
Whoever holds us here in the midst of a Law,
I hear him now
I hear him breathing
as he embroiders gorgeously our simple chains.
A R E N ' T Y O U T I R E D
Aren't you tired
of your beauty tonight
How can you carry your burden
under the stars
Just your hair
just your lips
enough to crush you
Can you see where I'm running
the heavy New York Times
with your picture in it
somewhere in it
somewhere in it
under my arm
S H E S I N G S S O N I C E
She sings so nice
there's no desire in her voice
She sings alone
to tell us all
that we have not been found
T H E R E A S O N I W R I T E
The reason I write
is to make something
as beautiful as you are
When I'm with you
I want to be the kind of hero
I
