by Alyda Faber
ii.
In my dormer room, the familiar keeled
clock tower rises beyond row houses.
No visit long enough for my uncle and aunt.
He promised to look me up
on his own travels in Europe. Such long Dutch words —
Ruimtebewapeningswedloop: arms race in space.
I filled a postcard.
Only my name, no address.
iii.
Vinyl-cushioned benches
ring the walls, a smoky den of tippy tables
for chance meetings between classes. On a watercolour day
I brought tête-à-tête daffodils,
placed them beside his coffee cup.
Drenched in my word-storm,
he asks, what should we do with these?
I cannot give the gift again, cannot answer, for you.
iv.
Interior a stage I managed,
though a stranger kept scraping chairs,
cutting streaks in varnished hardwood.
Secreting myself into the library commons,
waiting to see him,
only once setting on fire
an unknown man’s hair —
my incendiary look.
v.
I don’t know much about faith, he said.
Sometimes my grandfather took us to church,
almost hitting mailboxes on the way.
My piety only the first domino
in a row of obstacles
I kept setting up and pushing down.
What were the odds that he could tease
threads out of rules I wore vest-tight?
vi.
A summer convocation; on the program, his name
with a middle name I hadn’t known. He crossed the rectangular
stage on Johnston’s Field. In the press of people after,
our spare words.
I cannot say, I came for you.
I fled the roped enclosure to Our Lady on the hill,
leaned on a lacquered wooden back.
Leeuwarden Train Station
A couple meets for the first time
after months of letters.
She, known in her family for her reserve,
hugs him, says he can’t meet
her parents now — and light spits
herring scales from a gutter’s knife
through iron girders, the sun a fathomless
burn in a muted December sky,
its white light throwing objects
and people into helpless solidity.
Her younger sister died last week.
She will follow him to Canada
and spend most of her years
denying the peculiar cut of his coat,
his character.
Notes
“Unsaying” is borrowed from Michael Sells’s book, Mystical Languages of Unsaying. Sells translates the Greek term apophasis (often used to describe mystical writing reaching toward an elusive God) as “un-saying or speaking-away.” Unsaying continually and precariously recreates itself in a vibrant tension with “saying, speaking with” (kataphasis).
In the past thirty years efforts have been made to preserve the minority language of Frisian, spoken in Friesland, including the founding of the Fryske Akademy (Frisian Academy) with its dictionary (Dutch-Frisian and Frisian only) and other projects. The Frisian sayings in “Unsaying Poems” are taken from a seventeenth-century collection translated from Middle into Modern Frisian by Frederik Johan van der Kuip in De Burmania Sprekwurden. I use van der Kuip’s modern Frisian translations; the English translations are my own.
“Jealousy”: I owe some of the images to Wim Faber.
“Topsy-Turvy”: Jan Steen (1626-1679), Dutch painter and tavern owner.
“Paperpants”: I owe the reference to Shonagon to Kaja Silverman in The Threshold of the Visible World.
“Three Old Frisian Sisters”: The Dutch sometimes refer to ladybugs as koffee molentjes (coffee grinders). The poem is a variation on the ghazal form, and in memory of Siem Rutgers-Houtsma.
“The Visit”: Bestemming is Dutch for destination.
“Looks”: Rembrandt’s 1658 self-portrait.
“On Not Dying”: In memory of Leni Simona Groeneveld.
“Leeuwarden Train Station”: Leeuwarden is the capital city of the province of Friesland in the northwest Netherlands.
“Accept Loss”: I owe the title and content of the poem to a reflection on the Greg Staats triptych that was exhibited as part of the show “Steeling the Gaze: Portraits by Aboriginal Artists,” at the Dalhousie Art Gallery in 2011. The poem is a variation on the nonce form.
“Trespassing” is for I.F.
“Suture”: Definitions are taken from the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, second edition.
“Meeting my Mother in Rotterdam”: The bronze statue Verwoeste stad (“Devastated City”) was donated by the artist to Rotterdam in the 1950s and remains the city’s main war memorial.
“Visitation for an Aunt in Holland”: In memory of Tjitske Pander-Houtsma.
“The last word that can never be spoken”: The title is taken from a line in the poem “Du bist die Zukunft, grosses Morgenrot” in Rilke’s Book of Hours.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the editors of journals in which some of these poems first appeared: the Antigonish Review, Bitterzoet, Contemporary Verse 2, Ensafh, the Fiddlehead, the Malahat Review, and the Nashwaak Review.
An earlier version of “Leeuwarden Train Station” (the one-stanza poem) was a finalist in the Malahat Review Far Horizons Poetry Prize (2012).
My grateful acknowledgement to the people who, at various stages of my work on this book, were important mentors: Brian Bartlett, John Barton, Anne Carson, Anne Compton, Sue Goyette, Carole Langille, Kathleen Skerrett, and, at our regular monthly meetings, the Dublin Street poets (Rose Adams, Brian Braganza, John McLeod, and Marilynn Rudi). My sincere thanks to Ross Leckie, my editor, for his many styles of keen editorial engagement with my poems, and to the board and editors at Goose Lane for believing in this project and making it a better book. And to David Heckerl for unending sustenance.
photo: Massimo Pedrazzini
Dust or Fire is Alyda Faber’s first book of poetry. Her poems have appeared in Canadian literary magazines and online journals, as well as in a chapbook, Berlinale Erotik: Berlin Film Festival. She teaches Systematic Theology and Ethics at the Atlantic School of Theology in Halifax.