The tapestries spin enchantment.
They snatch us toward the start
of the hunt, to a hundred species
of plants and beasts. We notice
daffodil and periwinkle, see
witches’ broom, lady’s mantle.
Meld, madder, and woad’s
pigments of red, blue, yellow,
an artist’s bed of dyes. The tapestry
depicts origins of its own making.
The lymerer collects scant droppings
as a scout signals from behind
a walnut tree to the extant hunting
party. The unicorn is found. We see
sage leaf and orange tree, antidotes
hinting that the unicorn purifies
the fountain’s poisoned stream,
where a pair of pheasants now sip.
But the unicorn can’t be disturbed
when conducting its magic.
The tree blossoms and bears fruit
in a single instance, a paradox
of fertility. Twelve hunters surround it
in conversation, their dogs in wait.
Goldfinches, a stag, and rabbits
lay before the flowing pillar spout
and cypher AE. We puzzle over
what the enigma means. Pot marigold
under the hyena’s chin signals
disaster. Man watches animals
gather around the fountain. Ten
hunters approach the beast. The
unicorn leaps out of the stream.
An oak tree stands at centre scene.
AE glowers from four corners,
initials marking rumoured benefactors,
the aristocracy. A castle looms
in the background. A partridge
cheeps of thievery, the hunters’
spears brandished and thrust
at the unicorn’s torso, enclosing
it. The beast is surrounded
by men, dogs, and greenery,
forcing the unicorn at bay.
It defends itself well. Horn
dipped, it gores a hound as it
kicks a hunter. Has the fruit
of the ripe orchards turned sour?
The heron, known for lofty
flight, is undisturbed by such
melee and poses serenely.
A single blood drop trickles
from a slit in the unicorn’s coat
as spears strike from all sides.
We’ve heard only the purest
virgin can subdue a unicorn.
Otherwise, it remains invincible.
“Hail queen of the heavens.”
If the unicorn represents Christ,
the hunter, Gabriel, then the maiden
motions to Virgin Mary. We see
the mystic capture of the unicorn
in two fragments. The handmaiden
distracts from the sole cameo
the virgin makes on the scene:
a glimpse of sleeve, her slender
fingers linger on the creature’s
mane, the three enclosed within
the garden as menagerie. Behind
the gate, the scout blows a horn
from below an apple bough. The spell
is broken, the unicorn captured.
The unicorn bestows one last glance
to the absent maiden that fans
its coat, missing from the frame.
Stabbed by lances, echoing
Christ’s passion, the unicorn
is killed and brought to the castle.
The scout catches blood drops
in his drinking gourd. A party
of men and women parade
the unicorn to the fortress,
its corpse slung over a horse’s
saddle, one hunter fingering
its spiralled horn. The unicorn
is depicted both in the moment
of the sword blade’s deathblow
and in the procession carrying
its corpse. Its trophy bears
a crown of thorns. In an instance
we see the unicorn in captivity,
the beast fenced in – wounds
replaced with pomegranate
seeds, blood with juice –
captive but seemingly content.
A woven chain around
its neck secures the unicorn
to a wooden pen, seated therein
amid white irises and Madonna
lilies, carnations and clove,
orchids and bistorts, dragonflies
dashing over the wallflowers
and white thistle, the cipher’s
tasselled cord hanging from a tree,
bearing its riddle mysteriously.
LINE COMPOSED IN A DREAM
I thought there would be flowers
SUMMER PALACE
I eat buckwheat on the steps
of Peter’s palace. Peasants’ food,
a woman in the marshrutka consumes
raspberries on a tiny carving fork one by one.
I nap on a rounded topiary. She pierces
an apricot with a paring knife.
I’m a sucker for lavish fountains,
and shitting in opulent palaces.
Workers clean the vomit off the parquet floor.
A boy passes by with a bleeding schnozzle.
A kid with an eyepatch ogles the aviary.
It is a tourist’s mission to photograph
all 144 fountains interspersed with WC.
It is a sickness, this luxury.
I opted against riding the meteors,
hydrofoil skipping on water as workers
in camo pound mallets into turf.
SWAN DIVE
The stagehand rouses the cardboard
bevy on conveyor belt across the rear
of Swan Lake’s ground row, gliding
through the scenery. A woman kneels
in secret from the KGB, prodding
her son away from the peephole
in Akhmatova’s shared suite. Cue
White Nights and Tchaikovsky
on no sleep. We lower the periscope
of Morskoi Boi’s arcade submarine
and pull the trigger, inflicting maximum
damage to enemy ships, all of which
are attached to moving chains. In praise
of war games and long-eroded links,
we ride Soviet-era elevators not yet
on last legs to catch the tram’s
yearly decreasing fleet and descend
into the second subway’s fallout shelter.
The company comes out for yet another
curtain call, the third circle disturbed
by ringing cellphones. Peel back the skin
to the proscenium’s inner workings:
all of life’s a teaser and tormentor,
a stage decorated in azure, gilt, crystal.
Only the elderly theatre attendant
flashing laser beams from balcony
to Tsar’s box can thwart the tourists’
stolen frames. A Fabergé egg filled
with a ticking grenade. We pull out
the last stops, the pin still in place.
AUTOMATON
Of the silver swan dipping its beak
in a sea of waves to catch a metal fish,
much has been written: how the water
glinted, the creature’s movement so realistic
one might mistake the swan for elaborate
disguise. Among the memorable automata
comes to mind the famous digesting duck
(lost to history), a bronze-gilt elephant,
cuckoos eternalized in YouTube clips.
But mechanisms fully functioning or not,
nothing tops the golden Peacock Clock
ensconced in a glass aviary. In its forest
menagerie, a dragonfly perches on fungi,
rests on oak branch. To witness a technician
climb inside the cage and wind the device,
rousing the peacock to life, is pure delight.
The peafowl cranes its slender neck, turns
to fan its feathers, and dazzles audiences
with the splendour of its train. Flanked by
owl and cockerel, the trio greets morning’s
arrival, beaks singing to ringing chimes.
RUSSIAN ARK
I facetime Nathan from the Italian
Cabinet. He has Wi-Fi in his pocket,
walking the forested mall in Kyoto
to the movies. We turned divorce
into a contest to see who can run
farthest away, only to reconcile
via pixels of frozen screens. I call
him from St. Isaac’s Colonnade,
a boat on a canal on the Fontanka,
comforted by the bridges stitching
together the islands of this city.
I eschew all guided tours, my map
sticky from my water bottle spilling
on the pack of Orbit in my bag.
Equipped with just 30 gigs of Wi-Fi,
I make a beeline to catch glimpses
of masters’ canvases and malachite.
Not far from Crouching Youth,
I intuit ghosts in the Romanovs’
Hall of Portraits, do a double take
at the bronze bust of a Roman’s
missing eyes, linger in the Raphael
Loggias’ kaleidoscope of grotesques.
Black-and-white photographs strewn
throughout the Hermitage depict
blank frames of a city under siege.
There’s the Bolsheviks storming
the rococo dining room, Catherine
dashing from theatre to toilet,
the Golden Age sequestered away.
We end our call in the rotunda
after I share the Rembrandts
through my iPhone’s shaky lens.
Sit with the Rubens a little longer
for me. I walk backwards down
the stairwell, and into the sea.
THE OBSERVER EFFECT
Relegate to the dreams of one day
the life you thought you would lead.
This, the thought before sleep:
there will be no children.
Was it because you stand too close to paintings
you developed this piecemeal thinking?
He found you on the back steps
leaning against the door and brought you in,
peeled the plastic from your eyes.
This too was love.
When is it brave to turn away
and when is it foolhardy?
It wasn’t enough to acknowledge
you are capable of cruelty
– you had to enact it.
You could have gone a lifetime
without knowing that side of yourself.
You chose to stare your shadow in the face,
and this too was bravery.
Is there any part of language that sustains?
Every word’s an elegy.
He gave permission to set down
the burden of the past.
The act of seeing was one of change.
BLANKET CREEK
The corpse flowers are late this year.
Slow to uncurl their waxy stems,
heads lobbing under the weight of sleep,
underground in their winter graves.
Now that I hear the trees speaking
it’s with reverence I return.
Lay me down on the cedar’s fur,
magnified on skin, little water bear.
The tree’s burl is its bullocks,
threads of moss its pubic hair.
The ferns sway as they fornicate.
The tardigrades survive the war.
I missed the embryonic ghosts.
I let you go ahead of me.
I deemed your passage swift.
There were flickers of happiness.
I have worn my father’s clothing.
I have willed our oaths reversed.
It’s a narrow tree-lined path,
and at the end of it, a burst.
NOTES
Drolleries is another term for grotesques, or small drawings of human-animal hybrids that appear in the marginalia of illuminated medieval manuscripts.
“Aspect of Saturn” borrows an English translation of a Latin anagram used by Christiaan Huygens to disclose his discovery of Saturn’s rings.
“Leaving the Atocha Station” takes its title from the Ben Lerner book.
“I Dreamed He Came Over” quotes my mother.
“Gorgon” quotes Carl Sagan.
“Russian Ark” takes its title from the Alexander Sokurov movie of the same name.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Kevin Connolly for your incisive edits, guidance, and faith in my poems.
Thank you to Kelly Joseph, Dionne Brand, and everyone at M&S.
Thank you to Nathan Mader for your support, friendship, and conversation, and providing essential edits, insight, and advice on the book. Thank you to Credence McFadzean, Jake Byrne, and Karen Solie for your helpful edits on many of these poems. Thanks, as well, to Mark Levine and Andy Axel for your assistance in shaping an earlier version of the book.
Thank you to the Saskatchewan Arts Board and the Access Copyright Foundation for providing financial assistance. I am grateful for a Canada Council Travel Grant to attend The Banff Centre, and for the publishers who approved funding through the Ontario Arts Council Recommender Grants program. Thanks to the Saint Petersburg Art Residency (SPAR) for providing the space to write some of these poems.
Thank you to the editors of the journals who published earlier versions of some of these poems: BAD NUDES, Big Smoke, BOAAT, Canadian Literature, Canthius, carte blanche, CV2, Diode, Event, The Fiddlehead, Green Mountains Review, The Humber Literary Review, Juniper, Numéro Cinq, Prelude, PRISM international, Room, This Magazine, untethered, The Walrus, and Witch Craft Magazine.
Thanks to the editors of Best Canadian Poetry in English 2016 for including “Nymph.”
Thank you to my parents and brothers, and my friends in Toronto and Regina.
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