The spike hunts
constant as a compass.
You smile like a Navajo
discovering American oil
on his official slum wilderness,
a surprise every hal£ hour.
I'm afraid I sometimes forget
my lady's pretty little blond package
is an amateur time-bomb
set to fizzle in my middle-age.
I forget the Ice Cap, the pea-minds,
the heaps of expensive teeth.
You don a false nose
line up twice for the Demerol dole;
you step out of a tourist group
shoot yoursel£ on the steps of the White House,
you try to shoot the big arms
of the Lincoln Memorial;
through a flaw in their lead houses
you spy on scientists,
stumble on a cure for scabies;
you drop pamphlets from a stolen jet:
"The Truth about Junk";
you pirate a national TV commercial
shove your face against
the window of the living-room
insist that healthy skin is grey.
I 109
A little blood in the sink
Red cog-wheels
shaken from your arm
punctures inflamed
like a roadmap showing cities
over IO,ooo pop.
Your arms tell me
you have been reaching into the coke machine
for strawberries,
you have been humping the thorny crucifix
you have been piloting Mickey Mouse balloons
through the briar patch,
you have been digging for grins in the tooth-pile.
Bonnie Queen Alex Eludes Montreal Hounds
Famous Local Love Scribe Implicated
Your purity drives me to work.
I must get back to lust and microscopes,
experiments in embalming,
resume the census of my address book.
You leave behind you a fanatic
to answer RCMP questions.
1 1 0 1
T H R E E G O O D N I G H T S
Out of some simple part of me
which I cannot use up
I took a blessing for the flowers
tightening in the night
like fists of jealous love
like knots
no one can undo without destroying
The new morning gathered me
in blue mist
like dust under a wedding gown
Then I followed the day
like a cloud of heavy sheep
after the judas
up a blood-ringed ramp
into the terror of every black building
Ten years sealed journeys unearned dreams
Laughter meant to tempt me into old age
spilled for friends stars unknown flesh mules sea
Instant knowledge of bodies material and spirit
which slowly learned would have made death smile
Stories turning into theories
which begged only for the telling and retelling
Girls sailing over the blooms of my mouth
with a muscular triangular kiss
ordinary mouth to secret mouth
Nevertheless my homage sticky flowers
rabbis green and red serving the sun like platters
In the end you offered me the dogma you taught
me to disdain and I good pupil disdained it
I fell under the diagrammed fields like the fragment
of a perfect statue layers of cities build upon
I I l l
I saw you powerful I saw you happy
that I could not live only for harvesting
that I was a true citizen of the slow earth
Light and Splendour
in the sleeping orchards
entering the trees
like a silent movie wedding procession
entering the arches of branches
for the sake of love only
From a hill I watched
the apple blossoms breathe
the silver out of the night
like fish eating the spheres
of air out of the river
So the illumined night fed
the sleeping orchards
entering the vaults of branches
like a holy procession
Long live the Power of Eyes
Long live the invisible steps
men can read on a mountain
Long live the unknown machine
or heart
which by will or accident
pours with victor's grace
endlessly perfect weather
on the perfect creatures
the world grows
Montreal
july 1964
1 12 1
O N T H E S I C K N E S S O F M Y L O V E
Poems! break out!
break my head!
What good's a skull?
Help! help!
I need you!
She is getting old.
Her body tells her everything.
She has put aside cosmetics.
She is a prison of truth.
Make her get upl
dance the seven veils!
Poems! silence her body!
Make her friend of mirrors!
Do I have to put on my cape?
wander like the moon
over skies & skies of flesh
to depart again in the morning?
Can't I pretend
she grows prettier?
be a convict?
Can't my power fool me?
Can't I live in poems?
Hurry upl poems! lies!
Damn your weak music!
You've let arthritis inl
You're no poem
you're a visa.
I 1 13
F O R M A R I A N N E
It's so simple
to wake up beside your ears
and count the pearls
with my two heads
It takes me back to blackboards
and I'm running with Jane
and seeing the dog run
It makes it so easy
to govern this country
I've already thought up the laws
I'll work hard all day
in Parliament
Then let's go to bed
right after supper
Let's sleep and wake up
all night
T H E F A I L U R E O F A S E C U L A R L I F E
The pain-monger came home
from a hard day's torture.
He came home with his tongs.
He put down his black bag.
His wife hit him with an open nerve
and a cry the trade never heard.
He watched her real-life Dachau,
knew his career was ruined.
Was there anything else to do?
He sold his bag and tongs,
went to pieces. A man's got to be able
to bring his wife something.
I us
M Y M E N T O R S
My rabbi has a silver buddha,
my priest has a jade talisman.
My doctor sees a marvellous omen
in our prolonged Indian summer.
My rabbi, my priest stole their trinkets
from shelves in the holy of holies.
The trinkets cannot be eaten.
They wonder what to do with them.
My doctor is happy as a pig
although he is dying of exposure.
He has finished his big book
on the phallus as a phallic symbol.
My zen master is a grand old fool.
I caught him worshipping me yesterday,
so I made him stand in a foul corner
with my rabbi, my priest, and my doctor.
u6 1
> H E I R L O O M
The torture scene developed under a glass bell
such as might protect an expensive clock.
I almost expected a chime to sound
as the tongs were applied
and the body jerked and fainted calm.
All the people were tiny and rosy-cheeked
and if I could have heard a cry of triumph or pain
it would have been tiny as the mouth that made it
or one single note of a music box.
The drama bell was mounted
like a gigantic baroque pearl
on a wedding ring or brooch or locket.
I know you feel naked, little darling.
I know you hate living in the country
and can't wait until the shiny magazines
come every week and every month.
Look through your grandmother's house again.
There is an heirloom somewhere.
I 1 17
T H E P R O J E C T
Evidently they need a lot of blood for these tests. I let
them take all they wanted. The hospital was cool and its
atmosphere of order encouraged me to persist in my own
projects.
I always wanted to set fire to your houses. I've been in
them. Through the front doors and the back. I'd like to see
them burn slowly so I could visit many and peek in the
falling windows. I'd like to see what happens to those white
carpets you pretended to be so careless about. I'd like to
see a white telephone melting.
We don't want to trap too many inside because the streets
have got to be packed with your poor bodies screaming back
and forth. I'll be comforting. Oh dear, pyjama flannel seared
right on to the flesh. Let me pull it off.
It seems to me they took too much blood. Probably selling
it on the side. The little man's white frock was smeared
with blood. Little men like that keep company with blood.
See them in abattoirs and assisting in human experiments.
-When did you last expose yourself?
-Sunday morning for a big crowd in the lobby of the
Queen Elizabeth.
-Funny. You know what I mean.
-Expose myself to what?
-A woman.
-Ah.
I narrowed my eyes and whispered in his yellow ear.
-You better bring her in too.
-And it's still free?
Of course it was still free. Not counting the extra blood
they stole. Prevent my disease from capturing the entire city.
Help this man. Give him all possible Judea-Christian help.
Fire would be best. I admit that. Tie firebrands between
l iS I
the foxes and chase them through your little gardens. A rosy
sky would improve the view from anywhere. It would be a
mercy. Oh, to see the roofs devoured and the beautiful old
level of land rising again.
The factory where I work isn't far from the hospital. Same
architect as a matter of fact and the similarities don't end
there. It's easier to get away with lying down in the hospital.
However we have our comforts in the factory.
The foreman winked at me when I went back to my
machine. He loved his abundant nature. Me new at the job
and he'd actually given me time off. I really enjoy the
generosity of slaves. He came over to inspect my work.
-But this won't do at all.
-No?
-The union said you were an experienced operator.
-1 am. I am.
-This is no seam.
-Now that you mention it.
-Look here.
He took a fresh trouser and pushed in beside me on the
bench. He was anxious to demonstrate the only skill he
owned. He arranged the pieces under the needle. When he
was halfway down the leg and doing very nicely I brought
my foot down on the pedal beside his. The unexpected
acceleration sucked his fingers under the needle.
Another comfort is the Stock Room.
It is large and dark and filled with bundles and rolls of
material.
-But shouldn't you be working?
-No, Mary, I shouldn't.
-Won't Sam miss you?
-You see he's in the hospital. Accident.
Mary runs the Cafeteria and the Boss exposes himself to
her regularly. This guarantees her the concession.
I 1 19
I feel the disease raging in my blood. I expect my saliva
to be discoloured.
-Yes, Mary, real cashmere. Three hundred dollar suits.
The Boss has a wife to whom he must expose himself
every once in a while. She has her milkmen. The city is
orderly. There are white bottles standing in front of a
million doors. And there are Conventions. Multitudes of
bosses sharing the pleasures of exposure.
I shall go mad. They'll find me at the top of Mount Royal
impersonating Genghis Khan. Seized with laughter and pus.
-Very soft, Mary. That's what they pay for.
Fire would be best. Flames. Bright windows. Two cars exploding in each garage. But could I ever manage it. This way is slower. More heroic in a way. Less dramatic of course.
But I have an imagination.
1 20 1
H Y D R A 1 9 6 3
The stony path coiled around me
and bound me to the night.
A boat hunted the edge of the sea
under a hissing light.
Something soft involved a net
and bled around a spear.
The blunt death, the cumulus jet-
1 spoke to you, I thought you near!
Or was the night so black
that something died alone?
A man with a glistening back
beat the food against a stone.
1 1 2 1
A L L T H E R E I S T O K N O W
A B O U T A D O L P H E I C H M A N N
EYES:
Medium
HAIR:
Medium
WEIGHT:
Medium
HEIGHT:
Medium
DISTI NGUISHING FEATURES:
None
NUMBER OF FINGERS:
Ten
NUMBER OF TOES:
Ten
INTELLIGENCE:
Medium
What did you expect?
Talons?
Oversize incisors?
Green saliva?
Madness?
122 1
T H E N E W L E A D E R
When he learned that his father had the oven contract,
that the smoke above the city, the clouds as warm as skin,
were his father's manufacture, he was freed from love, his
emptiness was legalized.
Hygienic as a whip his heart drove out the alibis of devotion, free as a storm-severed bridge, useless and pure as drowned alarm clocks, he breathed deeply, gratefully in the
polluted atmosphere, and he announced: My father had
the oven contract, he loved my mother and built her houses
in the countryside.
When he learned his father had the oven contract he
climbed a hillock of eyeglasses, he stood on a drift of hair,
he hated with great abandon the king cripples and their
mothers, the husbands and wives, the familiar sleep, the
decent burdens.
Dancing down Ste Catherine Street he performed great
surgery on a hotel of sleepers. The windows leaked like a
broken meat fre
ezer. His hatred blazed white on the salted
driveways. He missed nobody but he was happy he'd taken
one hunded and fifty women in moonlight back in ancient
history.
He was drunk at last, drunk at last, after years of threading history's crushing daisy-chain with beauty after beauty.
His father had raised the thigh-shaped clouds which smelled
of salesmen, gipsies and violinists. With the certainty and
genital pleasure of revelation he knew, he could not doubt,
his father was the one who had the oven contract.
Drunk at last, he hugged himself, his stomach clean, cold
and drunk, the sky clean but only for him, free to shiver,
free to hate, free to begin.
I 123
F O R E . J . P .
I once believed a single line
in a Chinese poem could change
forever how blossoms fell
and that the moon itself climbed on
the grief of concise weeping men
to journey over cups of wine
I thought invasions were begun for uows
to pick at a skeleton
dynasties sown and spent
to serve the language of a line lament
I thought governors ended their lives
as sweetly drunken monks
telling time by rain and candles
instructed by an insect's pilgrimage
across the page-all this
so one might send an exile's perfect letter
to an ancient home-town friend
I chose a lonely country
broke from love
scorned the fraternity of war
I polished my tongue against the pumice moon
floated my soul in cherry wine
a perfumed barge for Lords of Memory
to languish on to drink to whisper out
their store of strength
as if beyond the mist along the shore
their girls their power still obeyed
like clocks wound for a thousand years
I waited until my tongue was sore
1 24 I
Brown petals wind like lire around my poems
I aimed them at the stars but
like rainbows they were bent
before they sawed the world in half
Who can trace the canyoned paths
cattle have carved out of time
wandering from meadowlands to feasts
Layer after layer of autumn leaves
are swept away
Something forgets us perfectly
I 1 25
A M I G R A T I N G D I A L O G U E
He was wearing a black moustache and leather hair.
We talked about the gipsies.
Don't bite your nails, I told him.
Don't eat carpets.
Be careful of the rabbits.
Be cute.
Don't stay up all night watching
parades on the Very Very Very Late Show.
Don't ka·ka in your uniform.
And what about all the good generals,
the line old aristocratic lighting men,
the brave Junkers, the brave Rommels,
Selected Poems, 1956-1968 Page 7