echoes all his sonnets
!8 I
and how you lean for hours
at the cemetery gates.
Dear friend, I have searched all night
through each burnt paper,
but I fear I will never find
the formula to let you die.
I 1 9
SONG
My lover Peterson
He named me Goldenmouth
I changed him to a bird
And he migrated south
My lover Frederick
Wrote sonnets to my breast
I changed him to a horse
And he galloped west
My lover Levite
He named me Biuerfeast
I changed him to a serpent
And he wriggled east
My lover I forget
He named me Death
I changed him to a catfish
And he swam north
My lover I imagine
He cannot form a name
I'll nestle in his fur
And never be to blame.
20 1
P R A Y E R F O R S U N S E T
The sun is tangled
in black branches,
raving like Absalom
between sky and water,
struggling through the dark terebinth
to commit its daily suicide.
Now, slowly, the sea consumes it,
leaving a glistening wound
on the water,
a red scar on the horizon;
In darkness
I set out for home,
terrified by the clash of wind on grass,
and the victory cry of weeds and water.
Is there no Joab for tomorrow night,
with three darts
and a great heap of stones?
1 2 1
B A L L A D
He pulled a flower
out o£ the moss
and struggled past soldiers
to stand a t the cross.
He dipped the flower
into a wound
and hoped that a garden
would grow in his hand.
The hanging man shivered
at this gentle thrust
and ripped his flesh
from the flower's touch,
and said in a voice
they had not heard,
"Will petals find roots
in the wounds where I bleed?
"Will minstrels learn songs
from a tongue which is torn
and sick be made whole
through rents in my skin?"
The people knew something
like a god had spoken
and stared with fear
at the nails they had driven.
And they fell on the man
with spear and knife
22 1
to honour the voice
with a sacrifice.
0 the hanging man
had words for the crowd
but he was tired
and the prayers were loud.
He thought of islands
alone in the sea
and sea water bathing
dark roots of each tree;
of tidal waves lunging
over the land,
over these crosses
these hills and this man.
He thought of towns
and fields of wheat,
of men and this man
but he could not speak.
0 they hid two bodies
behind a stone;
day became night
and the crowd went home.
And men from Golgotha
assure me that still
gardeners in vain
pour blood in that soil.
1 23
S A I N T C A T H E R I N E S T R E E T
Towering black nuns frighten us
as they come lumbering down the tramway aisle
amulets and talismans caught in careful fingers
promising plagues for an imprudent glance
So we bow our places away
the price of an indulgence
How may we be saints and live in golden coffins
Who will leave on our stone shelves
pathetic notes for intervention
How may we be calm marble gods at ocean altars
Who will murder us for some high reason
There are no ordeals
Fire and water have passed from the wizards' hands
We cannot torture or be tortured
Our eyes are worthless to an inquisitor's heel
No prince will waste hot lead
or build a spiked casket for us
Once with a flaming belly she danced upon a green road
Move your hand slowly through a cobweb
and make drifting strings for puppets
Now the tambourines are dull
at her lifted skirt boys study cigarette stubs
no one is jealous of her body
We would bathe in a free river
but the lepers in some spiteful gesture
have suicided in the water
24 I
and all the swollen quiet bodies crowd the other
prey for a fearless thief or beggar
How can we love and pray
when at our lovers' arms
we hear the damp bells of them
who once took bitter alms
but now float quietly away
Will no one carve from our bodies a white cross
for a wind-tom mountain
or was that forsaken man's pain
enough to end all passion
Are those dry faces and hands we see
all the flesh there is of nuns
Are they really clever non-excreting tapestries
prepared by skillful eunuchs
for our trembling friends
I 25
B A L L A D
My lady was found mutilated
in a Mountain Street boarding house.
My lady was a tall slender love,
like one of Tennyson's girls,
and you always imagined her erect on a thoroughbred
in someone's private forest.
But there she was,
naked on an old bed, knife slashes
across her breasts, legs badly cut up:
Dead two days.
They promised me an early conviction.
We will eavesdrop on the adolescents
examining pocket-book covers in drugstores.
We will note the broadest smiles at torture scenes
in movie houses.
We will watch the old men in Dominion Square
follow with their eyes
the secretaries from the Sun Life at five-thirty
Perhaps the tabloids alarmed him.
Whoever he was the young man came alone
to see the frightened blonde have her blouse
ripped away by anonymous hands;
the person guarded his mouth
who saw the poker blacken the eyes
of the Roman prisoner;
the old man pretended to wind his pocket-watch
The man was never discovered.
There are so many cities!
so many knew of my lady and her beauty.
26 1
Perhaps he came fmm Toronto, a half-crazed man
looking for some Sunday love;
or a vicious poet stranded too long in Winnipeg;
or a Nova Scotian fleeing from the rocks and preachers
Everyone knew my lady
fmm the movies and art-galleries,
Body from Goldwyn. Botticelli had drawn her long limbs_
Rossetti the full mouth.
Ingres had coloured her skin.
She should not have walked so bravely
through the streets.
After all, that was the Marian year, the year
the rabbis emerged fmm their desert exile, the year
the people were inflamed by tooth-paste ads
We buried her in Spring-time.
The sparrows in the air
wept that we should hide with earth
the face of one so fair.
The flowers they were roses
and such sweet fragrance gave
that all my friends were lovers
and we danced upon her grave_
I 27
S U M M E R N I G H T
The moon dangling wet like a half-plucked eye
was bright
