Civil Elegies: And Other Poems

by Dennis Lee

  way and they drank all year, or went strange, or they sat and stared outside

  as their cars settled back to slag and now what

  races toward us on asphalt across the Shield —

  by truck, by TV minds and the ore-bearing flatcars —

  is torn from the land and the mute oblivion of

  all those fruitless lives, it no longer

  stays for us, immemorial adversary, but is shipped and

  divvied abroad though wrested whole from the Shield.

  Take Tom Thomson, painter; he

  did his work in the Shield.

  Could guide with a blindfold on. Was part of the bush. Often when night

  came down in a subtle rush and the scorched scrub still

  ached for miles from the fires he paddled direct through

  the palpable dark, hearing only the push and

  drip of the blade for hours and then very suddenly the radiance of the

  renewed land broke over his canvas. So. It was his

  job. But no two moments land with the same sideswipe

  and Thomson, for all his savvy, is very damp and

  trundled by submarine currents, pecked by the fish out

  somewhere cold in the Shield and the far loons percolate

  high in November and he is not painting their cry.

  Small things ignite us, and the quirky particulars

  flare on all sides.

  A cluster of birches, in moonlight;

  a jack pine, gnarled and

  focussing heaven and earth —

  these might fend off void.

  Or under the poolside arches the sunlight, skidding on paper destroyers,

  kindles a dazzle, skewing the sense. Like that. Any

  combination of men and time can start the momentary

  ignition. If only it were enough.

  But it is two thousand years since Christ’s carcass rose in a glory,

  and now the shiny ascent is not for us, Thomson is

  done and we cannot

  malinger among the bygone acts of grace. For

  many are called but none are chosen now, we are the evidence

  for downward momentum, although despite our longing still restrained

  within the real, as Thomson’s body really did

  decay and vying to praise him we

  bicker about which grave the carcass fills.

  New silences occur in the drone of the square’s great spaces.

  The light overbalances, shadows

  appear, the people walk away.

  But massy and knotted and still the Archer continues its space,

  which violates our lives, and reminds us, and has no mercy upon us.

  For a people which lays its whiskey and violent machines

  on a land that is primal, and native, which takes that land in greedy

  innocence but will not live it, which is not claimed by its own

  and sells that land off even before it has owned it,

  traducing the immemorial pacts of men and earth, free and

  beyond them, exempt by miracle from the fate of the race —

  that people will botch its cities, its greatest squares

  will scoff at its money and stature, and prising wide

  a civil space to live in, by the grace of its own invention it will

  fill that space with the artifacts of death.

  On Queen Street, therefore, in Long Branch, wherever the

  people have come upon it, say that the

  news is as bad as we thought:

  we have spent the bankroll; here, in this place,

  it is time to honour the void.

  4

  Among the things which

  hesitate to be, is void our

  vocation? The houses on the street

  hold back from us, across the welter of city blocks

  our friendships keep stalling,

  even the square falls away and the acts of our statesmen

  will not come real though we long for it.

  Dwelling among the

  bruised and infinitely binding world

  are we not meant to

  relinquish it all, to begin at last

  the one abundant psalm of letting be?

  If only it

  held. If only

  here and now were not fastened so

  deep in the flesh and goodbye, but how should a man

  alive and tied to the wreckage that surrounds him,

  the poisoned air goodbye, goodbye the lakes,

  the earth and precious habitat of species,

  goodbye the grainy sense of place, worn down in

  words and the local ways of peoples, goodbye the children returning

  as strangers to their roots and generations,

  and cities dying of concrete, city goodbye my city of passionate bickering

  neighbourhoods the corner stores

  all ghosts among the high-rise, like bewildered nations after their

  surrender as their boundaries

  diminish to formalities on maps goodbye, so many

  lives gone down the drain in the service of empire,

  bombing its demon opponents though they bleed like men, goodbye

  and not that all things die but that they die meanly, and

  goodbye the lull of the sun in the square, goodbye and

  goodbye the magisterial life of the mind, in the domination of number every

  excellent workaday thing all spirited

  men and women ceaselessly jammed at their breaking

  points goodbye who have such little time on earth and constantly fastened

  how should a man stop caring?

  And yet the death of lakes, the gutting of our self-respect,

  even the passage of Canada —

  these do not intrude such radical

  bereavement merely to

  humour us, to bid us declare

  how painfully each passing brings us down.

  Every thing we own will

  disappear; nothing

  belongs to us, and

  only that nothing is home.

  And this is what the things were telling us: if we can

  face the rigours of detachment, meaning our

  life, our job, our home, permitting it to

  break over us, letting it

  bring us down till every

  itch and twitch of attachment loses its purchase,

  at the dead-end of desire and for some it will last

  a month and for some ten years, at last we

  find ourselves in the midst of what abounds,

  though that is not it but now we are set

  free to cherish the world which has been stripped away by stages, and with no

  reason the things are renewed: the people, Toronto, the elms

  still greening in their blighted silhouettes — some

  dead some burgeoning but none our property, and now they

  move at last in the clearness of open space, within the

  emptiness they move very cleanly in the vehement enjoyment of their bodies.

  But what good is that in a nation of

  losers and quislings? and for the few tenacious

  citizens of a land that was never their own, watching the

  ore and the oil and the shore-lines gutted

  for dollars by men from abroad, watching Canadians

  peddle their birthright and for these others, good

  stateless men and women and may they go down in civil fury —

  how should they clutch and fumble after beatitude, crouching for

  years till emptiness renews an elm-tree,

  and meanwhile the country is gone?

  I think much now of Garneau, master of emptiness,

  who in the crowded streets of Montreal

  saw not lost souls but a company of lost bodies, and

  moving into himself gave thanks when he discovered

  not
hing but desert and void.

  And I know that appetite in my own life,

  at work, at home, in the square, and more insistent every day it presses

  outward through the living will of the body,

  straining to reach its ground, oblivion.

  But some face exile at home and sniping at corporations,

  manic at times, and the patsies of empire their leaders lying for votes

  till the impotence spreads in their veins, there is

  shame abounding and sometimes a few good

  gestures between the asphalt and sky that might have been adequate

  once, and finally dying on occupied soil.

  Yet still they take the world full force on their nerve ends, leaving the

  bloody impress of their bodies face forward in time and I believe

  they will not go under until they have taken the measure of empire.

  5

  It would be better maybe if we could stop loving the children

  and their delicate brawls, pelting across the square in tandem, deking

  from cover to cover in raucous celebration and they are never

  winded, bemusing us with the rites of our own

  gone childhood; if only they stopped

  mattering, the children, it might be possible, now

  while the square lies stunned by noon.

  What is real is fitful, and always the beautiful footholds

  crumble the moment I set my mind aside, though the world does recur.

  Better, I think, to avoid the scandal of being — the headlong particulars

  which as they lose their animal purchase

  cease to endorse us, though the ignominious hankering

  goes on; this awakens the ache of being, and the lonesome ego

  sets out once again dragging its lethal desires across the world,

  which does not regard them.

  Perhaps we should

  bless what doesn’t attach us, though I do not know

  where we are to find nourishment.

  So, in the square, it is a

  blessed humdrum; the kids climb over the Archer, and

  the pool reflects the sky, and the people passing by,

  who doze, and gently from above the visible pollutants descend,

  coating the towers’ sheath. Sometimes it

  works but once in summer looking up I saw the noxious cloud suspended

  taut above the city, clenched, as now everywhere it is the

  imperial way of life that bestows its fallout. And it did not

  stay inert, but across the fabled horizon of Bay Street they came riding,

  the liberators, the deputies of Jesus, the Marines, and had released

  bacterial missiles over the Golden Horseshoe for love of all mankind,

  and I saw my people streaming after calling welcome for the small change,

  and I ran in my mind crying humiliation upon the country, as now I do also

  for it is

  hard to stay at the centre when you’re losing it one more time,

  although the pool

  reflects the placid sky, and the people passing by, and daily

  our acquiescence presses down on us from above and we have no room to be.

  It is the children’s fault as they swarm for we cannot stop caring.

  In a bad time, people, from an outpost of empire I write

  bewildered, though on about living. It is to set down a nation’s

  failure of nerve; I mean complicity, which is signified by the

  gaseous stain above us. For a man who

  fries the skin of kids with burning jelly is a

  criminal. Even though he loves children he is a criminal. Even though his

  money pumps your oil he is criminal, and though his programs infest the air

  you breathe he is

  criminal and though his honest quislings run your

  government he is criminal and though you do not love his enemies he is

  criminal and though you lose your job on his say-so he is criminal and

  though your country will founder without him he is criminal and though he has

  transformed the categories of your refusal by the pressure of his media he

  is a criminal.

  And the consenting citizens of a minor and docile colony

  are cogs in a useful tool, though in no way

  necessary and scarcely

  criminal at all and their leaders are

  honourable men, as for example Paul Martin.

  In Germany, the civic square in many little towns is

  hallowed for people. Laid out just so, with

  flowers and fountains and during the war you could come and

  relax for an hour, catch a parade or just

  get away from the interminable racket of the trains, clattering through the

  outskirts with their lousy expendable cargo.

  Little cafes often, fronting the square. Beer and a chance to relax.

  And except for the children it’s peaceful here

  too, under the sun’s warm sedation.

  The humiliations of imperial necessity

  are an old story, though it does not

  improve in the telling and no man

  believes it of himself.

  Why bring up genocide? Why bring up

  acquiescence, profiteering? Why bring up, again,

  the deft emasculation of a country by the Liberal party of Canada?

  It was not Mr Martin who sprayed the poison mist

  on the fields of the Vietnamese, not in person nor fried civilians — he was

  no worse a man than the other sellouts of history:

  the Britons who went over to the legionaries, sadly for the sake of the

  larger peace,

  the tired professors of Freiburg, Berlin, the statesmen at Munich, those

  estimable men, and the lovers of peace, the brisk switchers who

  told it in Budapest. Doesn’t the

  service of quiet diplomacy require dirty hands?

  (Does the sun in summer pour its warm light into the square

  for us to ignore?) And then if it doesn’t work one is finally

  on the winning side — though that is

  unkind: Mr Martin was an honourable man, as we are all

  Canadians and honourable men.

  And this is void, to participate in an

  abomination larger than yourself. It is to fashion

  other men’s napalm and know it, to be a

  Canadian safe in the square and watch the children dance and

  dance and smell the lissome burning

  bodies to be born in

  old necessity to breathe polluted air and

  come of age in Canada with lies and vertical on earth no man has drawn a

  breath that was not lethal to some brother it is

  yank and gook and hogtown linked in

  guilty genesis it is the sorry mortal

  sellout burning kids by proxy acquiescent

  still though still denying it is merely to be human.

  6

  I am one for whom the world is constantly proving too much —

  not this nor that, but the continental drift to barbarian

  normalcy frightens me, I am constantly

  stiffening before my other foot touches the ground and numb in my

  stance I hear the country pouring on past me gladly on all sides,

  towed and protesting but pelting very fast downhill,

  and though I do not decry technopolis I can see only the bread and circuses

  to come,

  and no man will use a mirror to shave, in case he

  glimpse himself and abroad there will come obscenity, a senseless procession

  of holy wars

  and we will carry the napalm for our side, proud of our clean hands.

  I can’t converse with friends without discussing Rome, this is

/>   bad news and though the upshot is not that I am constantly

  riddled with agonies my thing is often worse for I cannot get purchase on life.

  7

  Among the flaws that mar my sleep I harbour more than wars for I have

  friends and lacerations,

  brave men and spritely women, lovers of Dylan

  whose fears dovetail and though often our gentleness for our lover

  is straight and incomparable,

  we impose the roles that feed the other’s

  hankering and go on to

  savage what we have made, defacing

  images, our own, and thus finally

  destroy the beloved

  trapped inside the image.

  And the nerve-ends come apart and we spend

  long nights separate in the same bed, turning and raunchy as if

  our dreams were real for there are

  few among us who are competent at being, and few who can

  let our lovers be.

  And some are freed by the breakdown but many at once will

  lapse back into the game, projecting our

  monstrous images back outside us again, where we will

  deface them again and again destroy the beloved,

  and there is never any end to it while we are alive.

  And some move through these hard necessities

  like losers for awhile, but then they

  reach some kind of ease in their bodies’ loving;

  the agony hunger fades, they come to a

  difficult rhythm together, around

  their job and the kids, that allows for a

  tentative joy and often for grieving together.

  But mostly each man carries his lover’s fate

  inside him, which he fears as it stirs because if the drinks are strong

  or the conversation proceeds just so it will rise up and contemptuously

  destroy him, and at last when he meets the other

  with his own fate trapped like a bubble inside her body

  there is a baleful chemistry which draws them together for love and the kill.

  And out of that horror of life

  they take on the crippled roles that each has singled the

  other to partner, the voluntary betrayal is

  consummated and they are confirmed again

  in postures of willing defeat and furious at their own fresh self-abolition

  they tear strips off the other who has been their accessory.

  And they walk all night in the street for the fate is still in them,