You share one body now
with the serpent you forbid,
and with the dove that you allow.
The imitations of his love
he suffers patiently,
until you can be born with him
some hopeless night in Galilee;
until you lose your pride in him,
until your faith objective fails,
until you stretch your arms so wide
you do not need these Roman nails.
Idolators on every side,
they make an object of the Lord.
They hang him on a cross so high
that you must ever move toward.
They bid you cast the world aside
and hurl your prayers at him.
Then the idol-makers dance all night
upon your suffering.
278
But when you rise from his embrace
I trust you will be strong and free
and tell no tales about his face,
and praise Creation joyously.
279
My Mother Asleep
remembering my mother
at a theater in Athens
thirty
thirty-five years ago
a revue by Theodorakis
those great songs
she fell asleep
in the chair beside me
in the open air theatre
she had arrived that day
from Montreal
and the play started
close to midnight
and she slept through
the mandolins
and the great songs
I was young
I hadn’t had my children
I didn’t know how far away
your love could be
I didn’t know
how tired you could get
280
Days of Kindness
Greece is a good place
to look at the moon, isn’t it
You can read by moonlight
You can read on the terrace
You can see a face
as you saw it when you were young
There was good light then
oil lamps and candles
and those little flames
that floated on a cork in olive oil
What I loved in my old life
I haven’t forgotten
It lives in my spine
Marianne and the child
The days of kindness
It rises in my spine
and it manifests as tears
I pray that loving memory
exists for them too
the precious ones I overthrew
for an education in the world
281
To Be Mentioned At Funerals
Those days were just the twilight
And soon the poems and the songs
Were only associations
Edged with bitterness
Focused into pain
By paintings in a minor key
Remember on warm nights
When he made love to strangers
And he would struggle through old words
Unable to forget he once created new ones
And fumble at their breasts with broken hands
When finally he did become very old
And nights were cold because
No one was a stranger
And there was little to do
But sift the years through his yellow fingers
Then like fire-twisted shadows of dancers
Alternatives would array themselves
Around his wicker chair
And he regretted everything
282
Another Cherry Brandy
Another cherry brandy
and I will propose
to the waitress,
who sets the glass before me -
holding it like a blossom -
with such grace
I know she is a Master
of Flower Arrangement.
O arrange me, Lady,
in this rainy November night.
Set my mind
in the arborite street
so that I catch
as easily as glistening tar
the neon of Peel & St. Catherine,
so that home-bound clubbers,
broke and angry with their girl-friends,
will clasp and wave me
for one last toast
to everything they know is true.
283
Just The Worse Time
This year time was long between
..... old gardeners tending
..... black-yellow heaps of smouldering leaves
and smothering children
armoured in Red River coats and muffler turns ---
..... and so as nude girls discovered bathing,
..... striken, somehow unable to cover their breasts
the embarrassed trees fidgeted
in unsolicited sun.
We were embarrassed too.
prayed for great heavy drifts of snow
to cover trees and bare streets,
to heap on roofs of houses,
to swaddle mountains and waters ---
but the snow came thin,
covering the ground like cheap gauze,
clinging in tatters to the bark,
..... preserving footprints in the mud.
No. It could not come like an aristocrat,
like de Bergerac,
like a white waving plume,
..... as we prayed for
..... and will pray for
..... again.
284
Action
The stars turn their noble stories,
turn their heroes upside down;
the moon, obsessed calm moth
pursues its private candle past the down---
All these marvels happen
while I keep silent on my love
and say nothing for her beauty.
How can I bear the gulls perfect orbit
round and round the hidden fish,
how can I watch the fled sun
seize and harden the ridge of rocks?
In this glory I am innocent!
I am empty of command!
I live in the world!
Distant face, like an icon’s
disciplined to tenderness,
my silence is for you
Emptiness creates the field
where innocent as dogs
we clash for the complete embrace.
285
The First Vision
Sitting mangled in their chairs
like the losers
at a Borgia banquet---
my grandfather
my father
my stepfather.
Mother in a corner of the dining-room,
ignorant of her power,
urging the corpses to eat---
Eat! Eat it all up!
I made it!
Anguished at their ingratitude;
half-chewed meat falling like caterpillars
on their old-fashioned vests.
She didn’t know
the roastbeef was poisoned..
It was the perfect cut
coveted by every family cook---
as it stewed it sucked,
it turned to juice the venom
lost in the air of the kitchen.
Still, Mother, still, still---
you’ll scream softer if you think
of the hungry children in India.
Don’t lean across the tablecloth.
Dont’t look in
these outwitted thankless eyes.
286
Lord on Peel Street
He has returned from countless wars,
blinded and hopelessly lame,
He endures the morning streetcars
and counts ages in a Peel Street room.
Once for music he tamed a banjo
and softened Bach in a wooden whistle,
but he let the flutes and folksongs go
for the slow march under his window.
He is kept in his room like a court jew,
to consult on plagues or hurricanes,
and he never walks with them on the sea
or joins their lonely sidewalk games.
287
Bait
You stay in the grove
To ambush the unicorn.
I don’t know what the hunters gave,
But all the money of the sun
Falling betwen the shadows of your face
In yellow coin
Could not bribe away the scorn
Which fastens up your mouth.
For whom are those hard lips?
The hunters creeping through the green
Beside their iron-collared hounds?
Or that towered head who soon
Will close his eyes
Between your aproned knees?
And when the animal is leashed
To the pomegranate tree,
Don’t come by my prison room
Singing your victory,
Or charm the guards to undo the chains
With which I was bound before the hunt
When I cried that I was a man.
You stay in the grove
To ambush the unicorn.
And after wander to the poisoned streams
Which the unicorn will never clean,
And greet the good beasts thirsting there.
Then follow through the holes and caves
The animals who poisoned it
And cohabit in
