Drolleries

by Cassidy McFadzean

  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,
r />   as squirrel feeds on acorn and impish fox

  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.