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The Hotel Eden

Page 4

by Beverley Bie Brahic


  The First Memory

  In a forties Chevrolet

  We move from English Bay

  To a stucco bungalow

  Three will unpack now

  Near a park – scrap wilderness –

  Whose old-growth trees

  Are lightning-charred

  Where one polio summer

  A boy will hold me

  Underwater

  The time it takes to burn

  A memory. I will return

  To English Bay with Dad,

  This quiet man

  Who sits in the kitchen

  At 3 a.m. drinking Bovril.

  I made myself a cup of Bovril,

  He says and I reply

  It’s cold in the spare room.

  Moving Day, the Chevy:

  The first memory.

  The one in which Dad stepped

  From the ranks of returned

  Soldiers

  And hurried shyly towards us

  Is missing

  From the place memories are.

  Lost and Found

  When a text was no longer read

  Its oak-gall ink could be scraped off,

  The parchment recycled,

  In which case the first text was usually lost;

  Or scrubbed with milk and oat bran.

  In that case the first text might reappear

  A ghostly scriptio inferior –

  Object’s memory, ingrained.

  So Archimedes’ palimpsest

  Comes to light, underwriting Christian prayers,

  And memories we think or fear or hope are lost

  May lie dormant for years,

  Till, jostled by some scent or taste,

  They claim a new lease on life

  And swell the restless host

  That cross-examines me at night.

  On the Naming of Hurricanes

  Dido. Cleo. Gloria. Katrina.

  A force of nature? Unpredictable,

  Violent, devastating –

  A name for shelter swept away?

  Men did the naming, naturally. Still

  Wouldn’t you think they’d name

  A work of theirs – wee skirmish even – after themselves?

  Marathon. Agincourt. Verdun.

  Dad went to war. Returned

  With a drab canteen, printed

  With his name and rank. Good box, says my son.

  Good for keeping stuff in.

  Dad was pretty taciturn.

  I stored it in the basement,

  My go-to when I’m afraid

  I’m going to hurt my squabbling kids.

  Small as a darning egg

  I watch the furnace lick its flames.

  Take it, I tell my boy. Take Dad’s army box.

  Use it as you please. But please

  Steer clear of Mother’s rage

  And the battles no general wants to name.

  After the Quake

  I saved this photo

  From the Times: Sichuan, 2008,

  A squandered

  Child, cheek

  Nestled in her father’s clavicle.

  Jittery as wrens

  The father’s eyes

  Record the aftershocks

  Paper can’t contain.

  Dust films her pullover,

  The fuzzy one she wore

  To school today. Today?

  Today’s this egg

  Snug in her palm,

  Round and precarious as a belly

  Full of child.

  Was the egg pulled

  From the rubble too?

  She’s holding it – for now

  She’s rescued

  And will keep it safe.

  Letter Home

  from a Canadian Stretcher Bearer, 1916

  ‘I want to get a job as Battn stretcher bearer.

  It’s a rotten job, of course, no one wants it,

  But I think I’d be more use binding up wounds

  Than just carrying a gun in the ordinary way.

  ‘There’s no honour in the damn job, no chance

  Of advancement. But I like the work,

  And understand it a little, while I hate

  Looking after a beastly gun and forming fours and all that.’

  States of Siege

  For his father Hamoudi cooks soup from grass.

  The shepherd tells him what kind the sheep like.

  When they killed the donkey I took a few ounces

  Though Islam forbids it. Starvation is infidel.

  When neighbours slaughter the last horse in town

  Ahmed says I knew that horse.

  *

  What poetry matches a litany of facts?

  another three soldiers and an Afghan

  interpreter killed in two blasts – Globe & Mail

  sacked houses and temples, they killed

  women and infants along with the livestock – Thucydides

  Just give us the facts

  In their armoured personnel carriers.

  Long House

  Or consider the Haida with their hundred-odd words for rain

  Their long houses their bald eagles their abalone jewellery

  And their elaborate gift-giving economy

  That failed to save them from the Europeans

  Who wanted their fish their forests and their flags over everything.

  H. Erectus

  They gasp

  To see her stand

  No hands

  For the first time

  In history, clap

  For joy: Bravo!

  Bravo! But o –

  They clap hands

  To their mouths

  Now she wobbles

  On the brink

  Their small shadow

  Break-dancing

  With the world

  Then falls

  Thank god

  To all fours again

  And the moment that expanded

  Shrinks.

  First Snow

  1

  Tonight at dusk as hills

  Shy off and the flakes

  Start to whirl

  We see our boundaries fade

  With a sharper sense

  Of the unknown. Something

  Blurry crosses our field

  Of vision

  And enters the stand of trees,

  Aspen and wild

  Animal lope

  And the cold that draws

  Its cave of memory

  Like a skin around us.

  2

  And what to say

  About this mountain ash along the drive

  Whose red berries

  Are sugar-glazed in frost

  And hang

  Stunned into silence

  In a ruff of

  Brown paper leaf?

  3

  Our boots tromp a path

  Through silence

  Three magpies watch, one

  From the tip of each spruce

  Buffered in snow. Magpies –

  Mechanical birds,

  Three tin cut-outs

  Like weather vanes

  On a trio of spruce.

  Dapper in starched shirts

  And metallic blue tails

  They natter at us

  At us or the dogs

  Or the untidy world at large.

  4

  A patch of ice

  Shines between house and house

  We go out.

  Polar light over glacial hills.

  The top rail of the new fence glitters.

  Snow has erased each accident.

  No need

  To apologise now

  Small creature that ventured forth

  Before dawn

  And left us

  The small print of your tracks.

  Answering Machine

  for Chana Bloch

  We talked on the phone yesterday,

  You in Berkeley, me

  In
the South Bay, always the bridges

  Between us.

  Women’s conversations.

  Benjamin engaged to be married.

  They went to Vietnam

  To see her mother who won’t come –

  Too many time zones for an old woman.

  The poetry group convened on Sunday.

  Sorry I couldn’t be there,

  I said, we had a wedding – friends

  Who’ve been together for twenty years.

  Christophe in fuschia

  Socks and a lavaliere,

  James more sedate.

  Now they get health care in three countries.

  You and Dave are off

  To L.A. on Monday

  To get your results. It’s funny,

  You said, how happy I feel –

  One day at a time

  Or it might be the effect of the pills.

  *

  All winter I’ve been listening to you

  Repeat I can’t come to the phone right now

  I can’t come to the phone…

  And leaving a message on your machine.

  But today when I call

  To say I’m driving over to Berkeley

  Sunday and I’m thinking

  I could drop off

  One of my famous Tartes Tatin

  Which won’t be hot but should still taste good –

  And I’ll ring the doorbell

  And run away like some bad-joke kid

  The machine picks up

  In someone else’s voice.

  Land’s End

  The bridal parties file across the lawn

  In too high heels and flimsy dresses,

  Boys in rented tuxes

  Holding boutonnières in boxes

  Like pastries

  Or eggs.

  Vita brevis days are long.

  We sniff the grass that smells

  Fresh cut, watch the brides’

  Stiletto heels stab porous turf.

  The spires of the Golden Gate

  Rise through a frieze

  Of cypress trees;

  The ocean makes a muted din.

  Reclining on the grass we watch

  Musicians tote

  The strange shapes of their instruments

  Up the colonnade

  To the museum, a replica

  Of a replica, whose original –

  If one may speak of origins? –

  Is in Paris. The bridal parties

  Are replicas of something too.

  It’s all as old as war

  And trade murmur the figures

  On the bas relief.

  We Create Paradise

  Replies the purveyor of palms in pots

  On every side

  Of his immaculate white van.

  The sun posts west

  But yachts still venture out to sea

  And at intervals the foghorns low

  Although today

  Although today

  Although today

  There is no fog

  The light is consecrating everything.

  Scope

  for Lucie

  Standing on your porch at dusk

  We observe the fingernail

  Clipping of a moon as it descends

  To the opposite ridge

  Where a herd of elk – cows and calves –

  Also comes to rest

  Each day at dusk.

  I’ve never viewed the moon

  Through a telescope before:

  Tiny craters inside big ones

  As if it were scarred

  By a childhood disease;

  But it’s the inner edge

  My eye keeps turning to – not the clean-

  Swept moon that shines over

  Your child’s picture-book house,

  But ragged, frayed

  Like a scrap of lace

  That comes to light

  From the chaos of a dresser drawer.

  The Back Road

  We can make a loop.

  No need to retrace our footsteps

  Strangers tell us

  Over the asphalt road that winds

  Through vineyards

  Back to our own perched village –

  There’s a path through the woods

  Aromatic pine and oak

  On the north-facing slope –

  And surely circling back

  Is better than

  Returning over the same ground?

  Today we scout the trailhead

  Where they said

  Under the hill cemetery –

  All we find’s a road

  Downhill into shade and mud

  Not up

  To the panoramic view,

  And a signpost inscribed Chemin de l’Envers –

  Road of the Other Side

  Or maybe Back Road?

  Looks gloomy.

  Shouldn’t have mooned round the garden

  Sipping coffee while wasps laid their eggs

  In our figs.

  But hey, let’s give it a try.

  Down we go, into shade.

  The road forks, it forks again,

  We have choices to make,

  But – long story short –

  In no time we find our way

  Right back to our usual road

  Beside a slope of gently blazing vineyards

  Where grappillons still hang –

  Grapes for the gleaners.

  About the Author

  Beverley Bie Brahic is a poet, translator and occasional critic. Her collection White Sheets was a finalist for the 2012 Forward Prize; Hunting the Boar (2016) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and her translation, Guillaume Apollinaire, The Little Auto, won the 2013 Scott Moncrieff Prize. Other translations include Francis Ponge, Unfinished Ode to Mud, a 2009 Popescu Prize finalist, and books by Hélène Cixous, Yves Bonnefoy, Jacques Derrida and Julia Kristeva. Brahic was born in Saskatoon, Canada, grew up in Vancouver, and now lives in Paris and the San Francisco Bay Area.

  also by Beverley Bie Brahic

  POETRY

  Hunting the Boar

  White Sheets

  Against Gravity

  SELECTED POETRY TRANSLATIONS

  Unfinished Ode To Mud by Francis Ponge

  The Little Auto by Guillaume Apollinaire

  The Present Hour by Yves Bonnefoy

  The Anchor’s Long Chain by Yves Bonnefoy

  Rue Traversière by Yves Bonnefoy

  Ursa Major by Yves Bonnefoy

  SELECTED PROSE TRANSLATIONS

  Twists and Turns in the Heart’s Antarctic by Hélène Cixous

  Hemlock by Hélène Cixous

  Hyperdream by Hélène Cixous

  Manhattan by Hélène Cixous

  Dream I Tell You by Hélène Cixous

  The Day I Wasn’t There by Hélène Cixous

  Reveries of The Wild Woman by Hélène Cixous

  Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish Saint by Hélène Cixous

  Geneses, Genealogies, Genres and Genius by Jacques Derrida

  This Incredible Need to Believe by Julia Kristeva

  Copyright

  First published in Great Britain in 2018 by

  Carcanet Press Ltd

  Alliance House, 30 Cross Street

  Manchester M2 7AQ

  www.carcanet.co.uk

  Text copyright © Beverley Bie Brahic, 2018

  The right of Beverley Bie Brahic to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 1 784106 10 2

  eISBN 978 1 784106 11 9

  The publisher acknowledges financial assistance from Arts Council England.

  Typeset in England by XL Publishing Services, Exmouth

  Printed and bound in Englan
d by SRP Ltd, Exeter

 

 

 


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