blue bluer bloor This page intentionally left blank the martyrology This page intentionally left blank 'In so moche that in my dayes happened that certayn marchauntes were in a shippe in tamyse, for to have scyled over the sea into zelande, and for lack of wynde, thei taryed atte forlond, and wente to lande for to refreshe them. And one of theym named Sheffelde, a mercer, came in-to an hows and axed for mete, and specyally he axed after egges. And the goode wyf answerede that she could speke no frenshe. And the marchaunt was angry for he also coude speke no frenshe, but wolde have hadde egges, and she understode hym not. And thenne at laste a nother sayd that he wold have eyren. Then the good wyf sayd that she understood him wel. Loo, what sholde a man in thyse days now wryte, egges or eyren. Certaynly it is harde to playse every man be cause of dyversite & chaunge in langagc.' WILLIAM CAXTON 'The greatest literary masterpiece is no more than an alphabet in disorder.' JEAN COCTEAU This page intentionally left blank the maRtyROloGy Book 5 Bp nichol The Coach House Press Toronto This page intentionally left blank dear bp Thank you for your note. It came in the mail on the same day D. Barbour was showing Sons of Captain Poetry, so I went and saw it, really excellent. It was weird seeing it, a flash of the past: naturally I recognized the various bit players — Stuart and Sally McKinnon, Wayne Clifford (the volleyball game) are Kingston neighbours and the movie showed them before I met them — genuine pre-nostalgia. And flashes of the Coach House, Victor in palmier days. It was also weird to hear bits of The Martyrology that far back and I had a sudden image of your poetry capturing you like the Minotaur in the labyrinth — and started wondering what is the relationship of someone to the mythology they make up? Anyway. Best, Matt. This page intentionally left blank still for Lea still This page intentionally left blank 1 a road a rod a walk along a long day a dying night an art a log a journal that is right here ere i begin 2 among the streets & houses stand around me How Land over the bridge (du pont) to Daven's Port & in between a sea (mer) Wai full tragedies are played accomedies points of view: St George & St Clair never meet (he goes to College & becomes Beverly) fits together in its own sense St George to separate Admiral & Huron history i should've traced race against race against time rimes of coincidence (sense arrived at in a later reading latter writing related rewrite of tone note 1 placement of Stick orYlus in the hierarchy Stiff if if fits (alternate spellings suggested by George Pal in Dr Omic's St Andard Dictionary)) SWITCH i live on B run's wick so named 'cause it stuck out thick as his legendary stick into that wal of water flowed around the foot of Casa Loma licked its way between the hill that castle stands on & Russell's Hill or south stretching round the ruins of what was Harbored Harbour D (a harmony) only puns someone says i says glimpses of another truth 'nother story worth the tell '11 do as well as Mag Mell Olympus or Shanghalla all the old bars the saints'd gather at this new one comes into our ken understand (?) i 'understand' all i didn't see before connect these fact zones create fictions as someone (Brun?) did before me if i read the map aright 'Brun'swickken'dal[l]' 3 set ablaze by light it was the light! a candle (Kendal) burning hierarchies suggested in a reading Wai Mer's pa Dina Madi'fs] son (her one & only) images of ancient lineages St Orm the saint of ships & seas was he Wai Mer's father Dina Madi's son & if the one then all these names could be nicknames for claimd similur things (Wai Mer stretches south into the bluer strait streets houses lived in in my time short tho it's been one-third gone still learning trying to move on) more than the grand gestures aspired to actions give the truth to speech content of a daily life our struggle (ideals arrayed against the actual i deals) each morning step out that door onto this wick forms part of the shore head north for the bridge rise early get to work before the sky turns grey with smoke worlds of dreams & felt feelings memories evoked of childhood despair lost loves & lustres in this present world they are too present in struggle to return them to the past again archaeo logically walked today west thru snow across Dupont frozen streets/seas thot then of Kit James dead this past year caught myself (briefly) wondering 'what's Kit doing?' but he is done one takes so long accepting the death of friends/ /relationships new twists your life takes 'in the inner circle of communication the poet is opposed on two sides of thought' & i am mourning his passing caught up in the snow Spadina a dirt road trucks rumbling north for the subway's construction underground underworld under wal mermur murmer mer made memories white world of whispered presences (Kit?) death's deed's done deaths dead's done d'ath's d'ad's d'n & gone 'gin ag'in th'n on as snow's gone spring's come changes tone's tune my foots moved on the poem accumulates its clarity its imprecisions decision: lift my foot in march out the snow fresh fallen set it down in april when the flow resumes it is enough i would be done with all this dying would wake my friends from their dreadful sleeps of false reason reason enough to mourn reason enough to rail against a world no use getting hung up on a word no use not speaking say it &then (moving this very spring north to Warren Road above Russell's Hill & Poplar Plains above the port that Daven named the ford where St George laid his bed hoping to woo St Clair there she lies north of me instead impervious to his need between Poplar Plains & Russell's Hill some evidence of war & whatever battle fought there ends where these two come together north of the port the bridge now crosses4 as this bridge must connect two states of consciousness written weeks apart form a link your mind can follow paths my thots had taken transparent connections 'and' composed of forty-two words makes it possible to travel from 'the bridge now crosses' to 'walk thru the park past the castle on my way to work' deleting quotes (take up this speech again) southern fringe of Forest Hill ravines & bridges (under & over) another bridge pont pointed along it as i walk angered by this morning's meeting not really part of this poem part of my life only only part of the life this poem grows from my own) early July day heading north from Toronto Ebenezer Wildfield crops already taken off the land & bundled sheep grazed gullies summer sequences first herds long gone from these barns outside the city numbers replace the names subdivisions of a larger purpose a reading changes left at Chinguacousy Township 31st sideroad right at Sandhill north east on the 6th line Peel Regional Road 7 Airport Road 3 names for just this one path chosen sped thru Mono Road past the left turn to Ingle wood down the hill & into Caledon East paused to take note of the poem when you travel on the naming changes Caledon left Albion right i drive the border line signs warn of deer over the hills Mono Mills pause again the road's renamed Dufferin County 18 take note as i have before invoked its signs if only partially i seek to inscribe the net of names & numbers encloses me 401 west to Kitchener pass thru escarpment south of Hal ton Hills cliffs to the left edges of perception re new ways of sea ing's old line's ghost geography sail the lost lake bottom Ellie & me a thousand other cars cross the crossed out ross the rossed out sea cedilla softened slipping under disappears in eternity we will not drown in this July air tho one hurls one's lines as a drowning man or a falling fool might praying for connection some bridge between himself & the void that threatens drivin' long writin' poems that come out song sound tracking a life Gait Preston Hespeler they are all gone one sign now so many forms set my teeth to clicking semblances of speech change even as you pass them driving Huron County pass thru Shakespeare Stratford & the river Avon language & its shapers colonization of the Huron tongue i find i cannot stop these readings 'he reads too much into it' 'he read the signs aright' 'i stayed up half the night' 'doing what?' 'reading ...' when Victor's mother died he sent out the card that read AWAKE these words are simply signs signs i read as other words messages i saw that time wrote the phrase 'clues to unlock the secret mind' thinking i hid the key the tumbler's clicking awakened me up before dawn's missed tracing cardinal signs North Easthope left South Easthope right we are driving into that east our hope resides in what maps yield dictating lines as they occur revising when the moment conies on headlights blurred by fog cllie's hand shapes the letters so unlike my own infinite variety of form & pressure indexed by the measure chosen Nith River New Hamburg to the left Wilmot Township sky lightening in the east the most & least that could be written of put an order to the mind's perceptions make them mine d to e shift work with those occurences extend dependent on that play to say the line ends or continues second take September 3 76 Forest Road passed beyond the boundary of a city sequences fall Stratford Shakespeare New Hamburg next 'Little Europe' South Ontario the counties go Perth/Waterloo/Huron/& on it's Toronto i return to 'r onto toro 'n to TO. ronto Lord let my praise or love of thec substain me when death comes tho there be no greater plan beyond our lifespan no plan even then let that be enough (ending on a definite note moves the poem forward like a foot a foot note movement out of Huron County into Toronto into your presence Lord am i Tonto or Jingles to your kemosaby your Wild Billing i am charged with so much so much i owe to you any chain of words could lead me speak to you as if i were Palongwahoya charged with his mission once more to make the whole world vibrate in praise of you (billing & cooing bulling but coyly as my father must've made his move Father/ /Mother must have made her move too a priori movement into lewd onto logically thinking thru i m u r n g i c so clearly looking out across the surface of the words today the letters are not my n m e no thing is my n m e tho evil lives in various guises it's i s is n m e narcissus as it was so long a go ego and maybe even i go o go s poe goed edgarrishly all'a narcissistically so u go but u wonder y go as hugo ball did when e died e rose to heaven & his friends said 'did. he is done, d one & only hugo ball's bell billowed boldly BULLONG BELONG BE LONG TO SING MY SONG TO YOU LORD' flying out of 'TIME o u r ' the referee cries 'VOWELS' so disconsonantly u 'n a me u name me 'i for get you' i name me anew claim my signs my me mart in the word mart the word m art yr ology the ology word ology like some old bop phrase haunts my dreams ornithology horn it Ornette Coleman C.O. le man is bird or parker b o p bp's me but what is it exactly comes together) so lord a solo rd. as ol' ord je suis m. ord ...' 'merdre!' (the choice of course wor d (doubled u &l'sl (singularities present in a word) doubled you aligning one with one) lord d's common (Horn u) ord equates eek waits which is the fear of devilment deceit 'a bee see de evil in the false flower' alpha/beta calls me to salvation culls me out de vine from which i flower from which i speak my wonder into the world 'that's awe full' taken as a compli meant for me) 'for mi dable!' other persona nother name another frame of reference 'how high the moon' tuned to a different ear differen' tearing of the page an ordinary stage in the e quations (ord i nary st age in thee 'who's he?!' (i don't mention all of them))) AN NEX' LADIES & GENTLEMEN SOME HISTORY OF THE ANNEX TORONTO 1880 & earlier (to illumine the factual overlays the actual world i see) Spadina 'a sudden rise of land' built by Dr. William Warren Baldwin 1813 160 feet wide connecting his home on Spadina Hill to Lot Street later renamed Queen running up the right hand side of Lot 24 acquired thru his marriage as Lot 25 was acquired when Elizabeth Russell died willed it to him controlled then all the land from what is now Dalton east to present day Bedford north from Concession 1 (Bloor) to the c P tracks 200 acres of prime desirability influenced as he was 'by the feudal feeling which was second nature with most persons in the British Islands some years ago' wanting his position to be such that people would say of him as Dr. Scadding did 'there will always be a Baldwin on Spadina' immortality forgotten by his sons' sons broke the land up in real estate deals Walmer Road Estates (subdivided in the 188()'s) the curve from Bloor to Kendal being nothing more than a come on a country lane feeling to lure the suckers in november 2 76 drove down to Harbourfront to hear Wayne Clifford read remembering eight years ago the room on Brunswick Wayne & Juli lived in i'd visit them talked often walked the tree lined streets enclosed our poems Sean on Howland Dave UU on Huron Joe in the old coach house on Walmer Road later i moved back & forth Hazelton in Yorkville Howland on the edge of Seaton Brunswick & Admiral Walmer to St George & back again reverse ordering of streets pen creates its names activity a line thru history above these family tree lines november 3 12:56 a.m. image of Juli in that room beneath the eaves sadness in the form the lips take longing that pervaded filled up the syllables a count images touched on snow Sibelius Park: 1966 flickers conversations played thru i know more people than i can attend to live in two communities the one i make my daily life in & these friends writers struggle as i do make a mend join the torn letters of the language leaf fall which is the turned page the prose says atop the hill on Bathurst look back over Howland Plains jumbled view two-story houses & broken fences the full weight of civic sprawl assaults you funny the way the language lies more than two stories to all these houses impossible narratives i could never tell most of us are second story men & women echoing lives lived second hand lost at the second rate there was a toll gate stood corner of Davenport & Bathurst the toll-taker's house still exists hemmed in by all that was non-existent then when the carriage trade plied these roads scale changes in a hundred years my grandmother born 1885 has seen man fly faster & higher than she could ever dream a platitude perhaps reassert ion of what s obvious we dull our senses overcome by the immensity of it all switch channels on the second flight to the moon barely notice the photographs of martian sunsets consume such awe in full diffidence Brun left here because of it went away fell asleep in Thunder Bay & dreams body mined for silver he contained drained by the very people should have praised him raised him to sainthood St Brun echoed slightly in St Utter's son St Ubborn puns spun out the fabric of the word i mine the language for the heard world seen scenes unfurled by such activity January 10th 77 drifts across Davenport & Bathurst cars abandoned on the street reported to me over the phone stuck in the hills of Dufferin County outside a storm rages there is a world grows on this page as r ages a st emerges passed thru to the u age significances of 1'an g restated thru the vowel route we trace the change Brun was Bran in the older days raven who claimed a domain north of the arctic circle south where the bones of Utnapishtim lay in Dilmun if he ever died Bran who was also Cronus Saturn by another name who 'sleeps within a deep cave resting on rocks which look like gold' 'sleep is the bond forged for Cronus' whose dreams are full of prophetic power in his home across the Cronian Sea wind blown waters of the North Atlantic parallel with the north Caspian 47th parallel (approximately) mentioned by Plutarch 75 a.d. evidence of an older tradition placing Brun near the mouth of the St Lawrence 'this sleep being devised for him by Zeus in place of chains' he awoke strode inland lived out some few million days fell asleep again in the waters offThunder Bay as he had awakened once before recorded in that history of St Brendan echoes the Bran or Brun i've come to know came to an isle in the midst of the sea a giant sleeping there awoke hooked a cable on their boat & towed it till the cable broke & they sailed on came upon a land so vast they could not cross it in forty days & turned back never reaching the ocean i was born by this land the titan slept in one of the gods before the gods we know beyond the watery barrier of the North Atlantic 'in a mysterious castle surrounded by a waste land' watched over by Bron the castrate Fisher King 'wounded & immobile, neither living nor dead1 an Otherworld reached by water where the dead glide in their gray ships 'CANADA THE SLEEPING GIANT TO THE NORTH' as i read in one magazine when just a kid Saturn Atlas Albion Cronus Lord Mother Lord Father Bron Bran Brun Brendan bring me even now as we say as we did millenium ago 'God is dead' i would awake thee would ask the proper question if shown the Grail 'whom does the Grail serve' i am your vessel too i serve thee Brule was the first recorded whiteman to see Ontario 1615 first cartographical sketch the Molineux map of 1600 spoken of as the Lacke of Tadenac 'the bounds whereof are unknown' Cham plain's map of 1613 names it Lac St Louis or Brodhead s history where Lake Ontario appears in 1615 as Lac des Entouhonorons or variously Kanadario Lac des Iroquois Lake Catarackoui Lake Cadaraki or Lac de Frontenac signifier tacking back & forth because of the shifts in the signified the white explorers' knowledge of reality 'the great earthquake of 1663 wrought havoc in many parts of Canada and in the east whole rivers disappeared and others altered their courses' an early map by Pouchot shows a 'crenated barrier of high mountains' beyond Toronto that 'crumple down into hills on the lake shore' west of La Riviere Aucredie (the Credit as we now know it) mountains that never seem to have existed tho the watershed is there possible traces of an earlier tradition cloud range touching earth birthed a story of such mountains of the beings lived there Pouchot drew what he heard i write as i hear often there is nothing there beyond a rumour or a legend sounded the ground is noise silence as it interrupts it bissett in '64 visited me on Brunswick described a technique he used sitting in a room wrote down conversations that occurred focussing the ear at random a writing of a listening history the white man's record indians had their own legends saw the whiteman as interloper rowed in with death into their world as the french viewed the englishers intruders in the land they'd come to claim white v.s. white took sides French & Huron English & Iroquois H& ! twisting round of speech mirrored them each in each we talk of history honouring our claims what we claimed without honour set out to 'tame' the New World what was Old World with its own legends we name as fits our purpose shape language to our own ends all the lies, dishonour, death & treason such a use portends E Ot F I , , . s>-\r\t > natural enemies in the 1620 s H & Ij & God of (the many) (no) names who is (the one) (the many) (above) (around) (inside) all (watched) (did not watch) over everything God of names who is all over everything i read it different ways Father (G) Son(H) Holy Ghost (I) is part of we a trinity one step beyond the nuclear symbiology ringing in the race trace of memory G(od's) host (his many) or G H (I's oly ost (Os(am)t Is capitalized Gilgamcshing the immortality trick i lowers my case & sights (the train of thot lurches to a stop (St Op is standing in the station)))) Niagara raga in the night silver moon a sliver l(u)siver falls & phalls scar of cars moving head slight glare tail slight pulling away pen t' up down stroke the hand o.k. eh la plume de ma taunting under the skin's kin to will & can do canto as much then as seems necessary months later studying a map described the voyage Brendan made saw the legend printed where Canada came to be 'Land Promised To The Saints' rumours i had followed thru the half light of vision from Brun to Bran to Bron to Brendan Bran ab Llyr protector of bards king of the infernal regions whose magic cauldron brings the dead to life Bron who sailed westward to the Land of Beyond and St Brendan sailed thru the Outer Hebrides north to the Faeroes west to Iceland & Greenland passed the crystal column thru the thick white cloud south to Newfoundland & Brun who sleeps now in Thunder Bay husband of Dina Madi fathered him St Orm saint of ships & storms as Bron was the sailor of mysterious regions focus out the haze of legend dreamed reality saints come to be a destiny driven despite myself into the Don Valley Don who was the mother of the Celtic Pantheon called Dana by the irish (from whose lineage Dina) companion of Beli the Great (Bran his nephew) Children of Don linking with the Llyr family Dina marrying Brun i found a map lead me thru Toronto's streets into another reality studying the night sky in wonder recalling how (October 1970) i watched 'the shinie Casseiopea's chair' Casseiopea the welsh called Llys Don 'Court of Don' 'known as the Celestial W when below the pole and the Celestial M when above it' M polaris W turning round the centre of the sky i turned the 'Laconian Key' & 'E'en as a folding door, fitted within/With key, is thrown back when the bolts are drawn' i saw then ten years & more after the poem begins the simplest letters lead me i am brought back thru language home closer to the older -^jr wind shaking the house 6 a.m. sky light in the south-east (why does it sound like a beast is howling?) here on the hill above the harbour i woke frightened woke as the leafless tree outside my window shook read as omen the stark black branches the leafless book noise of Brun waking breathing over the city sleeps 6:10 a.m. Tiwaz crosses 'over on a spruce limb' onto the .Earth. 'as a boat over the ocean' 'over the wind falls' flat out over the Toronto hillside across the lake 'in the enormous distance of his cruise' Tihwaz & Brun lightning flash in the full window filled lost gone then & forgotten gods except by those of us who barely know you rumours reach us states of mind we write down the cosmic gossip line for line in the dawn of another day frightened by the sheer noise of your making of how you bring your name back again in the light in the lightning sky dawn Dana it is not Tihwaz day Brun s outline disappears against the hillside only the phallus shows the phall from Casa Loma south towards the harbourd -ina deedju dina deedju da de di do du du dina dina (in the aftermath the wind calms i am getting into my car & driving south 6:45 a.m. down the hill to Daven's Port Wai Mer's edge at dawn sleet blurring v is i on the don patrol bird soul seen at a distance wing on the holy breath blows above & below this fifth plane this world wold place of gods & men saints fell into grace & found a home on among the g race human life's played on a g string teased by immortality we are our selves finally the saints came to see to terms with their own mortality never assured by ultimate conclusions or reassured by knowledge of the end casting our shadow thru illusions of time & history simply to be part of creation making in a universe of making anew & anew again & again women & men until the beginning until the end until '& then') west train night more real to row 'n to sail to more owe a 11 is one litter all e &e 'e move me (the o v over) (seen in the window) in the wind the words swing back & forth the signs hazardous connections to their signifieds 'st orm's brewing up a' cup of coffee i should never have drank, drunk! 'drink?' think & then the n introduction to the other half in the window? b n inside this car (n y reflected back?) a&z outside the head's reflections (looking in side) by side i'mi i me'm i je suis se (false (hopefully)) propositions in prepositions whole sentences on the surface of the page SHOUTING (occasionally) JUST TO BE HEARD read but blue the wind blew but black clouds gathered the signs swung erratically words quivered on the tongue a growing feeling of unease in the stomach window covered half naked on the bed n to y exposed from the waist down i's i & is unable to keep the i's eyes open all four are closed & cannot see each other in the mind the words swing back & forth the signs hazardous connections to their signifieds are severed re-connected by the dream's logic an erection becomes as big or little as it needs to be encompassing the thot within it tomorrow casts a hook into the brain reels us forward into today s real yesterday was more real to day to ron to day do ron ron / Trims ahead of us \stands in one spot while we run to catch it this is the notion of choice this is a voice speaking reflecting in reflection metaphorically the page is a window it's not i try writing on the glass & the ink won't hold ideas the mind won't hold writing i try in the dream & this is a pen moving on paper metaphorically this is a pen moving on paper gesture memory trace place to place & a poem because of it part of a poem this time not always the case shaped mounds of earth beside the track in a park beside the track as we go past under the melting snow in the park shaped mounds of earth emerging from under the melting snow it all goes drifts & shifts in the wind & mind signs dark clouds in the evening sky blowing up again storm all day Saturday sean, thomas a., steve & i tramped the hills of Caledon down to t!v mil' at i atari out across the- bridge alonu the r a i l w a y tracks ice caves above the waters plunge scan climbing the hill for birch bark for torn 'don't take too much you'll kill it' birch, beech & book 'to write a poem on' page dedication to the work at hand above the ravine looking down towards the forks of the Credit four of us in the afternoon wind 'now this looks like Canada* against the end of speech discord & discard of signs meeting in time daily rhythms of a life & voyages into the world a breath holds above thcse valleys words in the water's spray 4 in the midst of. clouds i come to a crossing knowing' May 12th 78 Warren Road to Ravenscroft the road drops down the Atlantic Ocean's a conceit overcome in airs cnjambment of a tense & senses move from doorways into doorways step out into the streets of London up from the underground St Clair station to Golders Green north to the room el lie & i share reversing a thrust of history the Celtic was carried there (Canada) by Brendan 500 a.d. or (probably) earlier stone circles on the prairie near Medicine Hat cairns found inland in Labrador the mind circles some truth i've circled before the saints cross language as the s & t came from the middle east into England over the sea in memory spoken with a different stress & tone st ress in stone st one & lonely different in America or Canada in England every county forms a country stress their r we stress the newness of our be hiking 'cross the northwest end of Bodmin Moor parked the car at the disused mine near Tredinneck pausing at the Nine Maidens turned to stone for dancing on a Sunday later Christian tales of retribution dogs howl from the valley below climbing the peak of Hannibal's Cam gazing over the North Atlantic west towards Canada towards the origin of my be among the circles & the stones that spawned me millenia ago sitting in the midst of my antiquity in the underworld atop the under ground turn east again forward into my present past eyes ryme the landscape scrape like a bronze age \f / in the heel stone half-rymed on the stone's other side / / slash thru time thru the midst of my own daze i'll make my way into whatever future the poem holds for me this issue of time of rynic - climbed Glastonbury Tor in the pouring ram walked the ruins of the abbey there noone spoke to me at Chysauster among the stone-walled huts the fluttering souls clung 'round me spoke in my ear as i walked the hedgerow did not touch or interfere merely spoke in their wordless voices & i listened answered as best i could crouched under their roofless roofs talking it is like this saints the old days speak to me old ways have their sway your voices absent in this english air you seem north american who did not come from there immigrants like all of us take on the accent of a place affects your own it is Bran brands me my own restlessness quest in the crowded streets of London empty stretches of the moors search for a time your son had not visited us Lord back to the pagan & the primitive ones before the birth of your child changed you do you know you changed? the miracles dried up direct speaking faded way you let your son take over the day to day business of the world in these deserted villages among the ruined rooms i talk to those to whom you spoke directly the early ones who still hover here their flickering wings around me engine over-heating in a narrow lane near Boscawen-un couldn't find the other Nine Maidens left the car parked blocking the lane tried again made it perfect ellipse of twenty stones sun-dial finger in the centre counts another time than mine part of that order of which you were the master Lord sit in the centre writing to you sun casts the stone's shadow between the first & second stone 1:30 by the megalithic clock 1:30 by Maureen's watch in the ancient & the present times rymes Nine Maidens Bodmin Moor Nine Maidens Boscawen-un Merry Maidens (Dawn's Men) St Buryan 19 stones circling under clear blue skies west of Land s End beyond the reach of the ocean within the reach of the wind the landscape rymes again & again (three stone circles on the eastern edge of Bodmin) dawn the next day sun glint red on grey blue water sit by the harbour wall at Falmouth boats leaving for the fish banks & one lone man in the morning mist in a boat in the harbour circling disappears towards the sea follow with my eye & pen i can no longer see him sound of his boat insistent as he moves away the hills around the harbour pick it up bounce it back my way walking the huge circle at Avebury the length of West Kennet Avenue spoke to you Lord gaped in the twilight at Rollright back over the King's Stone towards the circle circled by hills again crossed the highway looking for the Whispering Knights saw them in the distance among the still green plants the still grey men listened to you whisper among the stones between the birds dull roar of traffic in the not quite silent moments that come your voice hums as it must have always Maker who spawned makers raised these temples for you gestures of their awe i name the places where i found you in a world where naming's almost gone lost in the 'imprecision of language' its precise gift i make these glyphs for you chronicles of a journey more the tracing of rymes referred to words names ways we have of thinking thru this world you gave us without ties we i's that write & writ all literature of which my voice is now a part or more a counterpoint in a vast theme from Golders Green to St Clair station amid this dream of voices these many tongues in which your names are sung under the trees in St James Square or outside St James north of St Clair saints & airs prayers This page intentionally left blank arch a is m a connection seen bridges tween four to five an afternoon & then an evening 2 nap pan pun vowelgrrgyrations pon pinning down pen that ponders only when the writer's home de script tion door hall an opening a friend permission then? change of tone 'i remember the first time when ...' thus it is that you begin a conversation moves from the window to the door over the crowded floor of the room too many rymes or coincidents the placid flow of th ink ing 2 ink in g (in be tween) h i j in the tree n its blue winter day straight thru the passed glass see it as it was the way the bird sat there on the branch a word in a poem self-evident i was seven years old th in on un pretentious conscious force is the im age the hero has left the stage replaced by the horror comic schemer dreamed his downfall in his.dark rage filled with nothing but his own envy his wish to be there in the longed for spotlight paging differently calling up the ones i still believe in can still talk it whole5 emotion ideation a unity there is a hole there behind the w the emptiness shows thru these configurations spellings evoke the feelings we cannot pretend are strangers 'the precision of openness' a phrasing phasing passed thru nothing s final in itself only tools you use breaking thru 'the unyielding word' into that world of feeling governs you picture a man (31) narrating this poem picture a man (36) typing this final draft picture the man they speak of who is almost them picture the man who writes (myself) a pose or the real thing? & picture me spoken of by the man telling telling in my turn they are all me one way not me another tightened focus rather centre of a principle uncertainty begin again then the road begin again the log's an art begin again ^ begin again I begin again ) that song it is a cycle i have chanted a season in its turn a statement of position given its due there's no need to hold it up to you he is not a hero in his various guises he is not a saint or figure to be saved he is himself sometimes the things we say are one & the same he bears my name he cannot bear it & he shifts htoi& etof if stiff saint of gratitude & heartlessness hazard of chance never to abolish born from death's tumble die & be cast translated equated from you Lord G to h to i D to e to f line being O unbending the eternal mystery of Your presence in the world we come out of G(O)D into the shift of probability possibility born b or n (first or last name choice is false i claim them both) signs monsieur ord sighin's ici's peech (qu'est-ce-que c'est?) sayings worked in as a saw seen surface surfeit arm of God clear light the sun rises as in a symphony oboes play systematically, brilliantly, the sound totters on the edge of language ici le soleil ceci says he seizes the line time, t' me, tatters shatters the shhhhh baababits of shpeech leaping (name's fame's fin ally (alley oops) le thend & n am i my own last word? conjunction tween a past world & the next? or anti-past a-historical i tied to my own life of fictions friction rubs the daily thread of? 7 or o dropped from the mouth of God Lord Holy Ghost Host? GLHGH 7 12 8 78 saint saint 27 15 42 9 66 21 3 a trinity sliding out of a numerology david speaking: 'a number by itself means nothing' i said: 'nothing by itself means nothing' lionel was tracking the word shift: 'laughter in slaughter' some speak of joy in all that suffering the message was thy love wasn't it? i do forget about that listening Lord even in my ignorance i know you are iam me em. ma peel de light de lips spil. sam tips, i saw he keeps ten or one t' tell to of one lost sole no foot'l let ten or one t' speek. eh? was i spit ma's lips spilQed? sani didn't catch cm then but what's with all this dick tracing pat pattin' of the past? between the b & m's the dirth & b & m s a birth dance of its own part of the mirthology reworking one book or rebooking work one or one work re book &: gee in the s peek eekis part of the equation quation's hung from an e informs the scream cream only if the c reams eak my love & eek my fear follow these vowel changes for what they teach me7 This page intentionally left blank trag/ /111 ClltS 1C /turn /complete the sense read the lines straight down 'ken'dal[l cross sea' the glyph (outline of a y or sceptre that some sea god might be holding) symbol of what power rises out of bluer strait inseparable from the sea that holds its shape (geomancy of the streets one-way patterns that insist automobility foot's ascendant now readings slowed (desired's mobility of text flex in the flux of what's actual) translations of literal ambiguities) below the curve of Kendal Walmer wavers forms the sea a reading can reveal an act u all are privy to ('a' 11 times raised to that power aaaaaaaaaaa interpreted different w r ays 1) a sigh (as in lovemaking) 2) a sigh (as of relief) 3) a scream (as in the murder scene - long & lingering) takes us where? 3 3 this multiplication attention to a visual duration comic stripping of the bared phrase the pain inside the language speaks ekes out meaning phase by phase make my way thru the maze of streets & messages reading as i go creating narratives by attention to a flow of signs) each street branches in the mind puns break words fall apart a shell sure as hells ash ell when i let the letters shift sur face is just a place on which im ages drift life's a sign beneath which signifieds slide away from Wai Mer Doll Towns just a step along wade Bluer Strait southern climes & reaches rimes that don't make 'sense' cohere 'false' sound versus 'pure' logic caught voicing the contradictions hesitations proofs of moments things aren't clear poetry's reverse or re-assessment of the role rejections of pose i don't know 'too much is said from ignorance' creates a movement's air air's movement's claire aT mer LE 'the' versus 'a' specificities of place ofmood 'SHUT UP!' Brun's wick s an isthmus so named conjuring an image of Brun teutonic shock of brown hair falls his massive cock hangs off the bridge pisses gainst the wal to fill le mer casually hand resting on Casa Loma pissing languidly like the man i saw in Heathrow Airport London spring of 75 unzip his fly & pee light his pipe with both hands at the same time & gaze around the washroom casually giving a separate intelligence to the thing 'a mind of its awn' like the dinosaurs carried an extra brain in their tails as if the body were too great a distance for thot to travel Brun s wick ken'd all there was to know an eye stared out the head of his prick & that stream of yellow was the knowledge flowed down into Bluer Strait mind freed for other things i read here how Brun s wick went to College like St George graduating possibly the same year but the brain his skull contained moved in the upper reaches far from this plane of gross physical realities he was the embodiment of the many ways containing as he did levels of consciousness yet its his dick we revere remember in a name caught up as we were in more primitive aims back there in our many beginnings St Orm was born out of the coupling of Brun & Dina Madi twisting in her passion outline you can still trace Lake Ontario north to Forest Hill writhing in the midst of Wai Mer we're heading back there underground into that womb St Orm came down from down to earth Brun: 'sky goddess it was good to know you' (grins) stretches out beside her underneath the bridge i cross to work analyzing dreams un reve du pont 'i'll sleep on't' living this last week with James T lies down three times a day to dream waits for the vision to come unbidden from the unfettered mind seeks to lose control of what he can so what controls can rise out of that regioned memory we know third hand reflected back in waking structures of the everyday constraints & chains we do not question till they choke us bind us in & we are screaming for our freedom as only unfree men & women can to treat with respect what sleep brings the pure moment's seeing & the seer's role to read aright the brain's light freed from constraints of consciousness residues arise what cannot be absorbed we needs must deal with in our daily lives sitting down today map of Toronto spread before me Warren Road ends at Kilbarry did i read there a warning of my death a sign realized i could read it either way walk out the front door turn then left or right north to where Kilbarry takes my life south to clear Clarendon 'n down town tow to Lake Ontario or go straight ahead thru Lyn Wood over Poplar Plains to the Avenue & up then to talk to St Clair living as i do there is that choice of confidants St George lives under the bridge like some billy goat gruff or common troll waist deep in the Bluer Strait he waits for you feigning sleep (when tiredness sets in the urge to write disappears i ds appears ds appears dsultory dspairing (dis for des? dese for dose? 'i'll trade you two verbs for a noun' dstnct but unntellgble)) fragments bursts of song or thot 'more like static on a radio' my life & then these fits of sound eruptions interruptions i'm tired LOrd yr HIrd hand's tired of this rd. ave. blvd. or lane path st. i walk this way with words the St. i follow or am followed by the hee hee ha ha ho ho tho i know its no laughing matter some days a sum of ways weights the measured writing of the poem ave ave ave to you St Orm even as the days turn colder i write s i c older in my turn all then ew (St Hat's fit top'r in t) we & then again ewe you u (i sang that song to my sister in the 1950s (si(gh))) St Er or St Ersi & maybe St Error to forgive divine di bitter fruits its grown sons & daughters who would spit on thee for thy human frailties thy lack of divinity forgive them & forgive me both i am the heir a parent in my turn should i choose to let that flame burn thru me i can died tho i be by awareness of my frailties my wickedness bless me Mother/Father bless me if sister be St Ersi what sainthood s left me? none. yet i do not fear thee Lord of the one duality i simply speak & in my speaking know thee the e ternal turn all humankind shall know hum an' sh kind all know hum an' sh kind all know hum an' sh kind all know hum an' sh kind all know hum an' sh kind all know LL no w,. w. v mmmmm mmblng 1948 'what he say?' drowned at sea supposedly 1955 'neki hokey' voice music w w w,w w w ww w w w \ wwwwwww\ . wwwwwww' iwwwwwwww wwwwwww wwwww\vw , wwwwwww J (whistle) mu sick i am nonetheless continent nent nent nent £± nent nent e ^•P nent e oh e nent e nent e nent € e ^-e r •07 e o- ^ on e\ f,;'} on V-" » I / (silence) a fly crawls the base of my window flies buzzing by my left ear i am sitting in my room writing out tunes my head takes turns in the brackage of language oe ua ua ua ua ua ua an d le K c (pronounced I \ ) i left burning in the poem an alternative to cursing cruising endlessly among the letters seeking the connecting streets the St Reets that inhabit this plane cruising at an altitude measured in megathots an attitude a particular point of view bird's eye flying in the fall sky south flocking flecks to the eyes a flexing of the mind no need to hide in the blind to see them flax the crop the Nichol boys grew middle 1800s when they came from Ireland Salem first then north to South Ontario my great great grandfather & his two brothers mills burned down three times moved west to Portage La Prairie separated one to stay there two to go south to North Dakota split up again sons of one to remain & my father's father & him to go north into the flux of history Canada an ordinary life of strife & suffering nothing you could salvage for the flicks nothing extraordinary for a movie or t v show no thing except the living & the will to go on with honour another hour day week month year Lord sum day You'll take us away as i was promised never believed believed in You Lord did not believe the comics i read in Sunday school only in You only in You only in You only in You only in You only in You only in You only in You only in You only in You that insistence that phrase s praise of You only of You only of You only of You from the core of us a chorus Horus God Father Son one & only in Your many names Mother White Lady Goddess the less is known of You the less is sung You grow old & lonely when Your children leave You vindictive its said rain Your rage upon our heads bring an end to our worlds our selfish living selfish is where the self is H attains that link between the ones forms llord the mahayanna view having reached a point of unity with heaven or with God we must place ourselves again into the world forward is a for world stance the human thing to do living now in Tertiary times fog lights on the Allen Expressway Wilson Heights Boulevard North i am following an expression as far as it will take me street names a series of street lives lights follow the leader on the tape i talk to hit the stop switch when the driving's more demanding than the speech ESSO SOB if i become well known i become a brand name fame makes its own claim on you anonymity gives the attic view as Emily knew so clearly who wants to be a household word? OLD DUTCH CLEANSER the absurdity mind rambles onfame or a meditation on names i reinvoke things a sing of idiosyncracies Dufferin Street north of 7 the land changes hills rise in the midst of farmland autumn stands of trees barns tumble in slow motion years in the disintegration to 'make a name for one's self as tho what one were bom with granted were not enough to somehow be carried beyond one's span & thus we cease to speak to our friends be rooted in community some immunity munificence that friendship brings 'sins' of'private writing' i speak to those who know me those who don't know me i hope they speak to me 'you shouldn't speak with your mouth full' let that insistence that is content take you themes return cyclical encyclical 5th side road Mono thru Adjala turning right & south to Hwy 9 left over the King Township Line of poetry boundary time autumn describes a shift in scenery weight of leaves falling trees grace an empty splace Schomberg 27 sky turns darker grey day draws to a close those on my back what's closeted in me sunglare speedsign lies behind dark lines of hills & trees be for me what they will always be unobtainable horizon crossing 400 on towards Newmarket the day grows steadily darker i feel farther away than ever from seeing what it is i look for in these readings sun setting behind or clouds cover it in world rolls on in its turnings there is that thing within me burning aching yearning longing all the words i seek to find an object for nouns they modify sky falls in on me St Reat again his face framed in clouds crowds who speak my name as if they accused me of what? nothing my dream my guilt my finger points out the fault in me rolling out of Toronto westbound trans-continental 11:39 under the Maple Leaf sign awake to watch the others sleep passing thru the CN yards north of Finch midnight October 19th October 20th 76 the moment of the poem draws near & passes rain against the train window against the t rain inside words ride the eyear connection tonight that seems enough for me leaving the last lights behind somewhere north of King City night encloses me the page 'til the next ring of words lights wakes me Sudbury in early morning Capreol & beyond mile after mile of trees skinny birch & evergreens frozen pools of water & the snow thousand mile forest surest wood i know walking the platform at Hompayne no clear ideas in mind it is like that sometimes life the poem parallels from which words flow connections that are made aid you in your journeying turn & return light slowly fades night aboard the westbound train conductor passes thru 'last call for dinner' tracking the inner view interviewing myself an intra view which craft i am apprenticed to interface place of this solitary voice in the world chorus waking from a dream berth sways so i can hardly write stayed awake half the night reading writing rhythmic tack of talk pen scratch lay back to let sleep catch morning Winnipeg H origins remembered names Fort Rouge St Boniface he of the happy face eternal smile saints that were there over the river in my childhood the presbyterian boy who eschewed the ritual view but not by choice voiced in the hard-backed pew hymns in the blank-walled Sunday mornings over the Assiniboine & into memory Empire Hotel we stayed in second time we moved here 1957 mother crying hated the house we rented hotel we stayed in Dea & me the two kids still at home we felt depressed too taking the bus to Portage & Main no one left here who knows me really no one i could drop in on call up on the phone only the memory of teenage loves &: losses wandered the streets half-expecting someone to call my name tricks of memory frames of reference emotions i thot of as most me return i am that boy again briefly left on Broadway Mordue Brothers Funeral Home mort ou the skeleton of Fort Garry across the street from Union Station back aboard the train & let it carry me out of the past crowds in on me Portage Junction Pembina Hotel away over the prairie Fort White to the south-west smoke stacks i still recognize hiked out there age 8 H was my home then Wildwood Park Fort Garry behind me now smoke drifts east from the cement factory heading west to Saskatoon my brother Bob was born there my sister Donna died six weeks old as i almost died six months old Rupert Street in Vancouver choking to death for no reason the no reason was inside me 3450Wilkes one mile from Carman Jet squat white bungalow nobody i know noted in passing their lives go on we touch obliquely only in this poem Wilkes Avenue paces the tracks miles beyond Winnipeg gains the designation 427 at mile 10.6 ends at the turn to Headingley changing to an even narrower dirt track signified by the proper noun Wilkes modifying the general term Road past farms & fields unfrozen sloughs light snow the black earth shows thru far as the horizon i read the road e to o runs on beside me angles off finally to the left disappears marked only by the trees & buildings clustered miles apart it is the and for eo eo Dacotah farmer's fields furroughs form a 45 degree angle with the track change to parallel & back up to 90 back to 30 last ploughing before the first snow came criss-crossed the west with my family 1944 to 63 dad working the CN moved again & again Vancouver Winnipeg Port Arthur Winnipeg Vancouver shift in street names Blenheim Rupert H Section Marks Morley Oak wood Oak & Cambie moved then finally out on my own Comox in Vancouver Hazleton in Toronto then that circle of streets enclosed me ever since within the boundaries of the Annex Saskatchewan distinct column of red light stretched between a higher cloud & mass of grey vapour blocking the south-west horizon sun setting momentarily seen red finger raised St Orm s face grey with grief & rage flames leap up from the field we pass offering of leaves & grass to you Lord smoke billowing away momentary vision sails or the outlines of nameless things clouds & blue Atwater sky barnyard lights blinking on black fields pale yellow grass definitions (e o e o) asleep thru Saskatoon of what s past 60 miles south of here my great grandpa Leigh homesteaded 1906 moved north from Henning Minnesota constructed a house of sod & lumber Viscount District of Saskatchewan near Humboldt with 8 of his 11 children his daughter, my grandmother, following him north five years later with her husband settled near Plunkett my mother was born Edmonton 7 a m day of talk & sleep carry the poem forward journal theutanikki October 23 1976 reading Shiki's Verse Record oj My Peonies the pot of them that Haritsu & Sokotsu brought him 'Thin Ice' on the name tag on the window of this room this morning name tags nick names v 'nick the prick' 'pussy' 'nicky' all of them me all noted in my nikki adrift between the signifier & the signified sliding thru the years myself as definition changing three days later climbing into a cloudy sky ruins that i knew are far behind heading off into an unknown country i seek only the absolute the instant's poem all the contradictions present to be dealt with saints & shadowed earlier gods voice of Brun arm of Dina Madi reaching atop the cloud range & beyond regions hinted at in dreams where the old ones dwell immortal inviolate forgotten when their names are gone you tolerate them Lord the many guises of your signifiers know you are the signified this plane flies on over a flat country of uncertain boundary cloud town empty & the trail to earth destroyed some trace of names Knarn a place then only in their memories like the little graveyard on the 5th sideroad Mono Township 'restored to perpetual care' farmers & families who struggled to build their share forgotten now great grandfathers & grandmothers those who died too young to bear where i went that one day to write GHOSTS rubbings with pencils & pens early Ontario concrete poems til i felt afraid or uneasy as tho i had disturbed their rest or that day i walked thru Kensington in the rain visited the Egyptian section of the British Museum stood over the mummified remains of kings & queens bodies that had found some immortality & shuddered heard in that crowded room complaining voices of the dead turned my face away & left dismissing it as melodrama or the stuff of which bad poems are made troubled all that day took the underground to Golders Green depressed & talked to Sean of other things to lock the ghosts away thinking always at such times of Donna my sister my mother's first child dead at six weeks & what done what deed i should remember only her shoes i found leather cracked & dry in an old cardboard box when i was thirteen with a photo of ma & Bob her next bom rushed into Saskatoon to the photographer in case he died too crying after Donna s death nothing left to remember her by echoed her in Deanna's name the next & last girl to be born &Don when he came into this world below the plane the clouds thin drawn out so fine one gazes thru onto the man marked surface of the earth language of fixed fields twisting courses of Assiniboine or Red rivers 37,000 feet above Manitoba we are moving too above the dead who brought us here the living let us into this world line thru time b.c./a.d. b.d. will do all my parents used to name the five of us Bob Barrie Donna Don 'n Deanna Donna echoed twice her death sounds in our family's daily speech our history cycle really acyclic if i step outside retain the edge of that perception high over the Great Lakes cloud wo rid hangs below us our world awaits below the massed & empty stretches of that place Sleeping Giant suddenly remembered stretched out in the waters off Thunder Bay climbing High Street almost every day just so i could see his face there in the wolf's head that was Superior Superior being i could never speak to feared to disturb as if he might rear up & smite me strike me down drifting thru the cloudworld parts to let us thru that space between their world & our own some face glimpsed briefly or my imagination wanders Brun? only a name recovered in a reading riding back again onto the asphalt into Toronto Toto r onto logically Dorothy s friend funny animal world of barking men & speaking dogs recalling the shock 1973 rereading Thornton W. Burgess's OLD MOTHER WESTWIND echo of the voice i claimed as mine soft slide of vowel sounds slipping round a harsher consonantal shelf the self recovers these echoes vocal traces of earlier love s lives i wrote three poems to Donna i remember haunted by her infant face i never saw staring at those last mementos of her placed among the consolation letters i made my own unwind themselves in the brain s grey reaches remembered or imagined pain of infant death caught up in the sob informs my breath line lin li 1 & i remain one & one ne gation stationed at the tongue s door to speak of it no more snow outside the plane the voice is mine speaks again Old Mother West Wind don't warm me now waiting the propeller spin round tick talk taxi to the sky my my a possessive case a subjective case the object of this proposition presupposing readers & a faith in living book for book goes on beyond me ies dies my my my reference stanza s end as in a cliff you stand upon words bunch before you follow intuition thru seek the new clear fissions & a kind of fiction achieves momentarily reality a sigh my my my my high over the cloud wo rid mist floats mountain or plain concealed from view no saints to talk to only the flat horizon line beyond which more of the cloud wo rid lies my my my my my my how the boy do sigh longing a lingering theme heme the one from whom song's spun above the Kootenay River below the house that Fred & Pauline bought across the way the mountains rise disappear in mist was this how the saints managed it? the day the cloudworld touched the earth clambered down the mountain peaks here where Columbia & the Kootenay meet stumbled out to greet the earth-bound day cloud hidden your face & name tho i flew above it yesterday sank thru the white world into this valley part of the will to be near you speak to you's the same i demand nothing in return tho its true i wish from time to time you'd find some way to speak to me even that thot mocks me your presence everywhere around us sentences in rocks & trees remembering London spring of 75 Paula Claire reading her text the leaves she'd found prints of stones voicing lines & signs she read as sounds notation Mother Nature God the Father world's a word you are one & the same so many echoes in this place Li Po& Wang Wei a sense only eight years since Fred & i last met across the 2000 miles separates our day to day reality distances the ancients wrote out of formulating concepts of citizenry winter snow on the black highway when will we meet again circling over Castlegar the next day headed off up valley between the Selkirk's peaks prisoner in front of me lighting his cigarette as best he could the deputy sheriff across from him admiring the scenery breaking thru fog to fly over the flattened plain these peaks are no part of their ranges intrusion rather of an earthly terrain clouds in the valleys as far as i can see two to three hundred miles all directions from me seated in this 12 seater Cessna so close my knees touch his back is to me handcuffs concealed from view one valley visible below the plane's right wing a rift or lake in this cloud world of which i sing the great folds or rippling of the rock from the Selkirks up into the Rocky range plane rocking & bucking as the air rises lifts us up & drops us the sheriff & the prisoner talk like old friends maybe it's me who's out of place displacing air by my very presence talking tho there's no one here to listen 'he's got his head in the clouds' 'his feet aren't on the ground' is there someone somewhere i'm talking down to? the Rocky s trail away to the right flying over the densely wooded slopes barren slashes of the lumber companies on to where the cloudworld begins again huddled so close to earth i become obsessed as if these were the ranges texts spoke of earthly peaks the saints sojourned as many months as they were forced to wait til their world scraped the face of this other place i call home citizen of earth here in the province of my birth take as provident those connections years extend as images edge of cloud drifting in among the whitened trees climb higher into green straight run across this white plain then flying thru disappears behind you cloudworld lost from view above it all the dome of blue sits peaks & ranges vanish finally i stare thru down to where my life awaits no saint to live on this unsure ground Lord you are always reminding me some lesson in humility instead of asking you to talk i should listen to you comer of Alpha & Beta Victoria B.C. windowless building with two doors inaccessible because of the trees & bushes planted there heading over to Mayfair just noting these language mysteries 546 Alpha faded one-story frame torn curtain draped over rusting metal bedstead broken easychair on the front porch just along from Gamma Street leads off to the left AANDERAA INSTRUMENTS 560 B SEAKEM OCEANOGRAPHY 560 A when one is lost in language is one all at c? looking thru the family bible next day envelope postmarked March 211935 addressed to grandma Workman in Plunkett faded rose petals & leaves letter lost now in the years between knew when i saw it it came from Donna's grave 42 years since she died would she have been a mother now or would death have claimed her in some other way sometimes i wonder if Donna s speaking thru me idly its true the thot crosses my mind is this why i felt forced to find my 'own' path back into language thru play as tho i were learning to speak again an owned sway as if she were there at play in the cloudy fields i only know i try to follow thru truths an attention to language yields & ma told me how near the end grandma Nichol would lie in bed singing hymns unaware she was doing it face lit from within so much i admit i don't understand are we living out a 'and' era a time for conjunctive reading a shift in the d n a forced to grapple in a new way with the world talking late into the evening with Barrie & Deanna reminding me how ma would talk to us told us about Donna frequently reminding us we had another sister her first child that she dwelt in heaven sickly from the day she was born the night before her death Donna smiled ma turned to dad saying 'she'll be okay' died the next day when ma was breastfeeding her the hurt confused images family daze talking with Dave two days later mountainside in North Vancouver children heading off thru the ravine trying to come to terms with some sense of family a weight thru history blood relations & the claims friends make on your mind your time of thot you start with that person in front of you dialogue acknowledgement of being the 'real' you get into poetry is the'reaF of speech the fact you try to reach pleasure some other body from your own all this talk of form or meaning an investigation gleanings from the act of poetry a noun describes more perfectly than any other that heightened sensibility talk should be an act of family gathering together like mind & feeling in the 'real' speak having driven from Victoria on the ferry fog & rain over the islands & the strait drove into Surrey visited grandma Workman in her 92nd year trying to image that gulf of time talked of grandchildren great grandchildren her changing sense of the world having watched a programme on space shuttles the previous night shook her head nothing more that could be said explaining to someone the other day how the saints come to me in the writing how i speak to you Lord then as now moments when the channel opens my eyes fill with tears tho i hang back from the ful 1 feeling wonder'is this real?' its real when i talk to you speak the saints by name call my friends forth into the instant of the poem make connections from form back into content to say as i see tho too often it still disturbs me write around the truth sometimes i give my trust over to the lines i hang from a climber in the cloud range i don't know the one in front of or the one behind me sense them in the line's play a tension or an easing of the same i let that climb continue as it may Donna today it seemed to me you could've been a writer not that this action s not my own it is but this business of words of texts that pile up in a day's writing a year's we shared that fear of living you died at six weeks i almost died at six months in that moment glimpsing you we shared some common experience i turned away back into the world never regretted it in the years since was i too young to realize what i was getting into? in the speak which is not speaking when i am seeking you Lord in the say when i let you in no longer distanced in the cynical i stands aside you has its way twinned or the limb only of your gesture sick of the old pleadings claim only my belief in you & nothing more no heaven or special preference for saying Lord i acknowledge & love you let it be simply that feeling & no other moves me April 30th 77 Paul phoned 'Jerry Lampert's dead' ashes to dust the head struggles to accept it Kit gone Jerry gone Pat Elliot too voices i'll miss make my way thru this region of the known join them in the un country of my birth death carry out this trust been granted me those few left who see a worth in the activity songs of praise & grief songs of joy flow from our pens & mouths beyond us gazing thru the car window today clouds pile up above the 401 thinking of the lives the deaths of friends i've come to equate life & the poem in touch at last with the real mysteries hill fields words pace me here fords there chevs for d che v.s.? verses re fidelegant egress egreter or lesser degreen or yellownership a matter of de green fields de high hills who owns de ford who drives de chev y ellie asked 'trying to be inspired?' do i aspire to be inspired? is that arrogance to seek to be one's own inspiration? as much a sin as causing one's expiration? do counsel me if i climbed that hill lay down in that field atop let the clouds drop down & cover me would that bring me closer to thee Lord? the days are too ordinary the world is too taken with itself the word is bought &: sold cheap daily speech is the marketplace of deceit & i have pledged myself not to bargain with thee work my life with my own hands as best i can accepting the help friends grant me granting them what help i'm able more able than i sometimes believe i believe this life goes on i believe this life ends & God i ask nothing more than what those two limitations extend but there are nights there are days there are dreams that portend signs that foretell i am for telling all i see because it seems you asked it of me journal entry: august 26 77 'i drive the martyrology daily retracing lines i have already written' driving east on 60 thru Algonquin Park mid-October 77 Lake of Two Rivers clouds divide the earth & sky first snow clumped upon the trees & phone lines dark greens & red of needles rotting white spreads thru the trees over the rock outcroppings the face of nature is the face of place not as particular but a general term i watch the clouds turn barely cling together in the grey sky Hidden Intersection where the mind meets the mind right turn left there is no polarity if you drive straight ahead up then into a place called heaven this drive drives on the physical plane part of a general tension or persuasion 'there's too much play in that line' by which is meant 'slack' an s lack absence of a feminizing fact or two push towards H e(a)ven shown in my life/writing 2 do become 1 note jotting in a larger work - x is tense is daily shall he this or that posited as Tree' will he do drive drown THE SUPREMES being only themselves til a superstar emerges ologies caus martyr mologies the head's a spin 'he's seeing stars' minute movies or the thimble theatre we dub 'life' silent screens in darkened rooms like a 'low-life' or a low mood fragment of a cyclothymic brooding li: "'"l., f gh the moo you can sense the rep the tition s sense s en s 'e's sence 'typing error responsible for suspicion' 'botch-a-you you botch-a-me' ba be bi bo bu by 'ba ba loo' just a variation on initial initial me viz: (in it i always see! what? just a voice in a cloud or a crowded room speech of vision initial initiate in it i ate from thetree of knowledge) voices that persuade invade the page pace my own volition evolution & me flashing a darwinning smile preference as the p reference includes that mid-initial ground bridges first & last entrances & exits 'put in a book & titled' 'the flow of which is poetry' my life Lord nothing compared to yours & yet i don't compare my life Lord my condition con dit: 'i on' (ou sphere (which is the global view glow ball crystal vision clear)) another con fess 'i on' at the core us rings thru a plurality of feeling being two & two relational 'why con then?' prisoners of our frameworks really our mental sets backdrops for the larger drama of our 'lives' (parentheses because the pair-in thesis is we's none of us alone) 'oh' (tho i've moaned a poem or two in my time its just the ignorant groan awaking in a dark room i didn't know the door would open that i controlled the key having rented it in 44 or 5 (okeanos where the sun comes running up the hill & i spill my feelings swallow the bitter s pill avoid the s wallow acknowledge woman birthed me &) i return a different doorway when the passions burn brightest) but the mind travels so many routes over the border out of England the landscape doesn't change we enter another state of mind shift in the accent a messenger then or carrier of the news found myself days later in a stone circle at Castlerigg in the centre of the peaks listened to your voice speak in the wind vowel noise you make pressed against the drum you fashioned in my body the ear takes in what the mind cannot encompass only half believes glib faith in your existence under the blue sky north of Windermere under the blowing clouds & the slowly shifting sun where the world comes together with its history murmur of the many of which i am one gone soon into the many some other one to come questioning our place this scheme of things studying the past the present future for what it teaches us in the inhabited places of this earth the gardens from which our speech flowers among the images inform our poems our history of literature come in time to dwell in memory as familiar so long cliche is its name the images outlast us the daffodils & buttercups within the stone walls of poetry s cottages the image bank s reopened &'s recycled enters the world of print & passes from us megalithic structures we call poems left to stand on the white plane builders' dying growing a little older every day in the cliche of age sends you forth to flounder on your own thru the world of scorn & noise into the silent reaches of the brain i'll let the text explain itself leave the rest to stand inexplicable as stone returning to Castlerigg at dawn cuckoos calling grind of lorries shifting gears up the hill towards Penrith sun rising due east atop the one stone thru the opening in the ring of hills in the chill of 5:30 a.m. the light spreads out over the valley over the stone circle over our still waking heads Ellie paces the outer rim one step two Maureen & Steve in the living centre 'you can feel the heat here' snow on the upper reaches of the mountains these words these incantations prayers & riddles spelled out in the chill air now as the sun reaches us the vastness seizes us Arthur's Table, May bo rough Long Meg & her daughters four of us pacing the circle there studying whorls on ancient stone as if a tone were struck within the brain rings the changes links the chains of thot history mysteries that seem insoluble the voluble presence of a silent world driving over Hard Knott Pass into the Roman hill fort Medeabogdum only the sheep left grazing here at the outer edge of what was once Rome 700 feet above Eskdale gazing out over the valleys & the mountains no words left at that moment i don't need them the mind works in different gears struggling to absorb assaults of grandeur earth's & man's gestures of arrogant military brutality turned into this lonely wonder at the top of the world holding my breath on crumbling walls man piled stone amid the sheer rock weight of mountains attempting to be true to the moment at hand the thrust of the poem the cumulative weight of your own history of a writing pushing you into this shock of perception it all crumbles all falls away Castlerigg at sunrise Hard Knott hill fort as sun falls all the seasons of the earth falling away beneath me in the midst of this tiny poem these few books among the sheer weight of all literature or nature wilder by far more enduring than these human walls & words but in the end simply to have said i began them carried them thru to the end or was outlived by them is in a way to begin to be human This page intentionally left blank This page intentionally left blank bridge shaped from fragments of older tunes discarded excised november 71 (random) voicesfrom the record player voices from the head lie in the bed & make sense of it no longer part of your vocabulary afternoons oft's & h's blown up from towns to the east conscious of each song the bird sings 4 differences diffidence that listening breeds how was it there? cloud town i mean what was your sense of we? social good? individual good? was it the usual repressive society? Halifax Dec 4th 71 Roy & me route 3 to Peggy's Cove GOOD WOOD dark clouds in a blue sky gulls boats instances of sequence thinking 1968 weight as in any measure stops like the dropped line disparate the connections shatter desperate all that is left said or unsaid inside this circle inside this moment i have lived before what sense of time music that i move from i am the I i hold turning the imperative is the present tense the sense of urgency moving (saint reat it's hard to say 4 you were the one i knelt before before the others were more than a game split my skull & showed you the dull wonders sun travelling round me in my ignorance had my own way of going knowing things to do lost sight of til the child & i stood by the dark line of trees watched the tide flow backwards from the bay (speaking that day of John Thompson s daughter John's dead abandoned words fill your head messages struggling for release are they clearer as you grow older?)) this is a love poem for a time moments the world lay open to the mind you stepped thru bodies touching as they do in sleep i know how this seems St Reat fictions for a time our place is i never lied is this what the muse is so much skin so many breasts & thighs stand in the rain [London] May 17 1975 Sean & i gazing up the height of Cleopatra's needle muddy waters of the thames below us 4000 years have brought it here among a strange people who do not worship the god it honours another shrine stolen another namefor you known Jather/mother will i see you soon? this poetry of place & places traces of earlier rimes out-takes of the muse's movement thru me or my own grappling with a wish to speak each one a bridge i chose not to take reasons lost now in the years between6 failed lines or conceptions voices that i bid be still troubled by what they troubled in me so that i sentimentalized them gave myself a reason to reject them threw them away arrogant mood of self-congratulation everything reconsidered then take it all in the bad & the good the could have as well as the was ask yourself what you're doing where you're going in these words (you's me peeks out these marginalia these footnote chains ask myself who took the im from mortality accept its absence lack of answers try to make my feelings plain) you do what you can ask of the walls you live in fingers & a way of loving way of reaching not of holding on i become revisionist in my thirty-third year fold the old poems in search them for clues to earlier feelings early incarnations evening star over our shoulders walk thru the snow towards our home what is it passes thru you as the other opens shows you the way to go living inside each skin you meet as if this were touching turning round the page walking south the view changes the landscape remains the same bridge d i s carded vo ices lie no after no ons blow n conscious diff idence how clou dwha tso c i a Iwa fax sHali Roy rou tego odwo odgul Is 1 968 we i gh tli ke th eal Isa id insi de insi de wha tiarn thet he's aint it's you before split sun had knowing lost t ilstood watch ed shaped from i n long ero fu poftha t was tow n was go odit & 3 as the disparate connections desperate that or this this sense am imperative sense re a t h ar d we re the mytra veiling my things sight the b y the f r om excised no vember the t he part t's from each listening it i your individual the December me to dark boats in dropped shatter is unsaid circle moment of the is o f to the others skull round owntoof child the tide fragments 7 1 record voices bed of&t owns song differences breeds there? mean sense good usual 4th peg g y's co veclo uds any line left i time I the urgency say one were & me wa y d o & dark flow of (random) player fro m & you h s to the of repress ive so c i e ty 7 1 in instances measure have i present moving i lost & out of pattern as a guide only know this landscape 'like the back of my hand'11 more showed in o fi line backwards older the make vocabulary the bird wea ofli ved music hold tense knelt than you my going off romtu nes head sense east sings blue sequence stops before that before at h e ignorance trees theof sky thinking i turn in g g am e d ull b a y it move wonders from they can as if they were but and you long to touch we refuse to say , these or , i was unwittingly &did as it must be then & i'm the one , out of the questions like do & break them up again fragments 71 voices & vocabulary & listening was good? repressive 71 Peggy's dark of stops disparate unsaid i present reat were more you in way do i watched flow spea kingjo hnsfi 11 mes sage sar ethi smome ntsy ou bo die sifi c tion si isso sost and lo ndonsea ncle opatra s 4 OOOa mo n gwhoano therano therfa thermo therthistra cesou t-takes or each reasons failed voices troubled so gave threw arrogant everything that dead abandoned your struggling they is the stepped touching know for ne verthi smuch man yinma y&i needle years a do shrine name poetry of o fmyon elostlin es tha tby tha tmy selft hem m oodrecon sid er ed day head for clearer a world thru as how a lie dwhat skin breasts the 17 i muddy ha vestra ngeno sto lenfo rofear liert he own a now or i what i a aw a yofthen of words release as love lay they this time the & rain 1975 gazing waters brought people worship you will place rimes muse s grappling bridge in conceptions bid they sentimentalized reason self-co n g ratula ti onJohn you poem open do seems our muse thighs up of it the known i & movement with the be t rouble d t he m to t hompso n s grow fortoinst place ist het he he rego dsee places thru aiy e arstil lin reject daughter older at h e sleepr eatish eight tha mesit youm ewish cho sebet ween me thenmi ndof below hono ur s s oo n tou stake & well you're marginalia the mortality my you a not thirty-third poems early star passes the inside and meet the or drove out together (report on a state of mind) — it leaves you desparate. but why? you're so to be , as tho we lived our lives to say you know these things — you know i take the t he ask where's you peekingt he ask in g w hoac ceptm glack try i n g you ask fingers wa yifo Idsear chearlie rearly even in g walk what shows living as it bad could yourself you remeoutfo otno temys elf tookits oftodoof & ofbec o me thet hemfee lingsin camat i on s start hru isy ou inside if all & have what goin go fch aint he absence answers make whatt he are aching revision is t old forover the it the each this in the as you're in the immy you wall swaynot in poems clues our snow passes way skin were good well doing these marginalia ou t ow n canyo uofofm yintos hou Ider st. owards thrutoy outo yo uto uch in gas words of feelings live loving holding thir tythir dour yo umeett hemor talk ypl aininon year home as w as t heot her opens6 ch^ a"i rx a'nS gl i c clou M | re in | ax six k | a H\ l <=> ' c 1 *• r» r c i in i (as\_ 1 go n \v there is nothing left to be written/ /tunes head east repres- "even [ ed dropp ed fg_iht_ e e 1 -fd P an -OT- S1 — ense— re 1 t h e t -•fromi sive earlier/i still/not of thirty-third home is no g/lsa -on^-^f low-h' s-p-on^-j—j-fi-this-my-j-t-of i~yQ u ~ng '-i—i-oi 1i i-yuu-rig t t^ S -[s -|— _al_ ed from twastow/the or/b excised/ were (random) ive ty this -trr— f* (*C g b r\ an\ 1 A :A — e nes//of that old life/he has said too much/ /or frag- h1 e bf\Ai. like \ 1 conscious S l - e v e n tv~one .- ..- ments/tion hem a thru/own love do/lin e fingers even/ / hru each/hou aininon sun/sense and i die/therthistra ^ \ thistr tr\ troifl" h -arrogant- S t j f cooe). ei -Mi Doetry oodrecon own/marginalia up conscious how//there is no- ^ ^^fffHhow-^F ,eventeen_ownJJ_i_re!e e nothing left to be written/he writes in a note to himself// fd e n our known "t he "rouj AP bri worship e . t to i s t there Halifax -fa— a mil _pl earlier /gh , ei rimes each/i still/not of thir- ^ -ftq-farljfllja e e n _ s t __e m ty-third home is no g/lsa ed from twastow/the or/b li/] — ( a s s\ { p or report le I o n av| [ay 1 i „ e t t _ L. al 1 1 as op\ 1 ens only the contradiction/carnat on n thrutoy (random) & differences it cloud town i or never obvious on the face of it in temys on his face as he stares back from the mirror muse is rain rimes out-takes reasons his head is blank between lines a not ke filled with nothing but the knowledge that th he s ain't t nothing left to be written This page intentionally left blank This page intentionally left blank 'who?' lejoual Raoul to speak one's tongue & speak it fluently choice locale concerns to disappear into the dream or understand it move thru it moved & moving in your turn felt world of feeling we deem deep. name to measure as deed is. gather feeling willed & wild as deer penned in the pen contains them on this page • as in the dream i had a poem given me authored it seemed by bill spoke of that place 'th deer roam proud & wild' i realized today could be his spell deer for dear herd for heard on the stair you turn your head as she comes thru the door confused or distracted your world is only paper today that sway print holds over you the s way curving back on itself eschews the straight line takes you point to point what happens in the curve blank space s encloses as field or action stop photo of the hand's movement put down the pen reach up to turn the light off & kiss her say hello let the slow swell of speech settle 5 presence grows & touching here her herd's heard her heart's hart's dear you come to know what the spell shows matters of language & the wish to know more more either side the me voices the work would bring together heads nod asleep the lack of it 5 you are wrong-headed bull-headed pigheaded for a fall an up crash set results posted on the page stat is tics talks its own lies or truth 'he'll go far if he keeps his wits about him' driving Sunset Blvd Los Angeles dreams in afternoon sunlight silver screen of fog over the sea shifts alphabetically to red inland stopped smog on Wiltshire Blvd old man in splayed sandles shopping bags stuffed with garbage picks his nose in front of Saks Fifth Avenue heading out the freeway to Anaheim dislocated 'Faith honours God God honours Faith' 'SPIRITUAL PROBLEM? CALL OUR HOTLINE' angels lost above the red grit clouds head adrift in a speeding car alive in the ruins of North America what is the political content of this poem po' lit i call my own stance in my pance or a burr in the brain chill in the heat of California living out the latter days of a civilization distrusting systems for the lures they are wanting nonetheless 'a solution' or some way to light the candle reveal finally the face of oppressor & oppressed dispel the clouds of rhetoric beneath which their distress breeds waking later (4 a.m.) cars roar by (all night) on the freeway red tracer lights fed on the bones of the past here in the actual wild west of my father's dreams the 100,000 year dead suffer their last indignity released into air to hang like wraithes haunting the holy wood last legacy of the last frontier where men went to live beyond the law lungs seared by their own folly lack of harmony evoked in a harmonic line the dischords strike the eye & ear the brain reels stuck between the southern rockies & specific blues pacific north of here i was born inland from this same ocean Vancouver harbour town an earthquake in '45 tossed me up from the ground i crawled on to float in the air laughing a lifetime trying to come down fear of falling the long dawn bridge stretches on what is best & worst in most of us confused conflicting rules of thot or thumb lacking the precise measure play the thing by ear try to make it match some inner hearing words fall apart in/out , , , the world is reconstructed —n— the head high over the Golden Gate the cloud world thins turn to fly north towards Vancouver Dave, Barb & i in 62 sat in the Black Swan Cafe gazed out on Robson tried to figure ways to get us here south to San Francisco time takes care of some things approaching in a different way Rafael & i talked this very point this morning how we'd both come to see half-truths & delusions one accepts as reality your perspective broadens or your view changes such relief in growing older increasing ignorance you feel more confident with first rays of sun awash in the eastern sky the plane drops down towards the great rills of the eastern cloud plain lights of cities visible thru the rents in this world i am hauled from place to place time to time line following line wheels skim the plain & pass thru another plain below me successions of false landings real events in the floating world what else can you do? fourth cloud plain below us the plane banks left lights flicking on under the wing banks right & then drops over the edge towards the fifth plain saints descended to i call home i know the wheels will finally grab hold will not pass thru to a rumoured sixth or seventh cloud worlds known to a few in the still light sky thoughtfulness settles ruminations thru the mind's body the repressed insists itself forgotten griefs despairs covered over by the inability to face the horror of it — the self helpless — arrogance to fend off that humiliation for that which i have done that has offended i seek forgiveness not from you God but from myself to live that much more honestly albeit difficultly writing in the fading light of day birds sing from the trees across the lawn dawn is the length of my dreams away toss all night in sleep images fill the brain spill over pages of this work Rafael said, rightly, 'we are the time machines we search for carry that history in our memories' floods the daily life from time to time a deja vu of being 'I want to learn how we can take life seriously, without afflatus, without rhetoric; to see something like a natural ritual, maybe an epic mode unrevealed, in the everyday round of affairs.' Louis Dudek in Atlantis ages rise & fall the daily life disappears repeatedly under the heel of new tyrannies descending in the name of the common man in the name of greed & brutality that life's forgotten supplanted by silence & fear here on the galaxy's edge we live out our lives in ignorance the distance to the dawn bridge grows infmitesimally longer our lifetimes flare briefly & are gone highways stretch from the big bang outward cycle back to our beginning1 This page intentionally left blank This page intentionally left blank bridge that flowers bridge that is the clicking of my teeth turning tongue twisting back on itself11 idiocies of speech reclaimed i name my own folly fall foaling till my throat is hoarse words the sounds my body makes noise without reference listen to the silence point between words drawn from letters or combinations break them up as Williams suggested strip them bare of beauty which is the referential glare & let them stand there thrust out the throat full spoke in language I'an g" which is the year seven or the g of old 1'age d'or u age slowly rapidly u age inexorably outside this relativistic terminology death inevitable life a gift or hope that's given us ift iven one gone others move on the chan'e of change chance enhances c (and en) are echoes of a childhood set on trains 44 to 64 years slide lost in the palindromomania7 6 6 each range which is the speech chain gang if i take it that-a-way8 ridden rids one of conceits of knowing a showdown s where you let the words show k's now s is how kiss is where the lips make instead of take noise in the joy s pleasure ring to sing again songs sung in the beginning a recitation of repeat a song a longing ends then in the brain trained ears observe a change in tone recognitions of defeat despair12 one for whom none of these things are there well what of him? double the dedication doubling as pun acknowledgement of one in particular inauspicious a promise to the self begins a process of farewell acknowledged other eyes get looked thru some notion of emotion & the sea a charming lack of comprehension (sibility) a passage thru this circus confused the mouth lost as one can be among the sensory a scenario emerges viz: one's lonely life is a carnival' & death? A 7 the letters are black arrayed over a white field the mountains does flatten only the h rides boldly above the face St 111 make the h ill St And is reabsorbed to make his stand circus rising round him & the denizens citizens in the travelling show we know as civilization gather on the stage the scene switches to the dressing room we observe St And as he applies his make-up & speculate on his despair that his life has been a failure becomes too obvious realizing that there is a hierarchy we discuss it then turn our attention once more to his love life while we are watching him the circus disappears 7 St And: Chorus: St And: Chorus: St And: it is another world vaguely seen the bear (aside to audience) caged cannot cross, (he crosses the stage) you stand on this side & look up, way up, into the blue air Chorus: it is the colour of St And's hair the circus disappears down the road, we do not see it but we hear it — the shouts & curses of the drivers — the sounds of elephants plodding & rumble of wagon wheels, a cloud of dust drifts across the stage. Chorus: St And: & the hills? the hills turn red ... (he pauses for a moment listening to the circus, the sound of its movements growing fainter & fainter, he begins to walk towards the back of the stage, kicking at the floor, mumbling so that we barely hear him) ... if you ever cross over the curtain falls the page turns nothing a title presents itself St Reat emerges from the background does a pratfall Chorus: St Reat these halls are slippery someone snickers is reabsorbed into the writer's head within head words without end a world of eyes & teeth & tongues moving lips a scream stage lights up a ten foot high black column out of which an arm is sticking is placed just to the left of centre stage there is a smaller column to its right three men in white gowns walk out from between the two columns then disappear stage left as they pass the chorus intones their names Chorus: St Reat, St And, St Ranglehold St Ranglehold re-emerges from between the columns carrying a small tub of water in which two plastic boats float he places the tub on the stage & proceeds to sink first one boat then the other, continuing as long as the chorus speaks Chorus: (pausing between each statement) cries of the sailors caught in the heaving line the tongue can't speak, beseeching. saints without name. pain of reaching beyond touching. hands. stage lights go out. a single spot picks out the fingers of the hand sticking out of the column, they move almost imperceptibly then are still, house lights come up & a questionnaire is circulated in the audience on the nature of metaphor & the poem, various questions are raised & a short discussion ensues between the author & the audience, suddenly the theatre is plunged into darkness, stage lights come up on the chorus. Chorus: this? (gesture around them at the stage & the rest of the theatre) this is dismembering the heart's history. the scene shifts a ship drifts into view & is lost a variation a situation where understanding is questioned some detectives & an avenger a reference then to tender moments & the emergence of a longer line or two (the truth behind these sentiments is a question asked once of a mother) leading up to final hymn Dream Girl from the D.C. universe & verse the words for colour on a purple page a blank another more like a dream of sorrow self-indulgence in another room we cld've titled Scene Three The Martyrology (a play) in which the narrator decries his longing his fate with specific reference to StOrm who moves on stage opens a large volume & begins to read St Orm: my lady, my lady - this is the day i want to cry for you, but my eyes are dry. somewhere i'm happy, not like the sky outside this window — gone grey. (he continues to talk but we cannot hear him. we do see his lips move, the narrator moves on stage, his talk is desultory, despairing, & can be improvised by anyone around the theme of their troubled love-lives &/or friendships, intermittently St Orm speaks.) that was the past, always i shall return again to you my lady. (whenever St Orm does speak the narrator looks momentarily shocked, then continues with his monologue during which, even tho he is addressing St Orm, he does not look at him.) & the colour of her eyes too. did i tell you how my lady moves? holds me to her - tight — she can! love to feel her moving with me into that sweet togetherness presses us thru. (as the narrator babbles on St Orm looks more & more concerned, finally the narrator pauses & looks around despairingly.) Narrator: funny the way the thots break (he sinks to the floor of the stage & simply sits there.) St Orm: it is a voice, a presence close to sleep, speaks from that too familiar world, i will return my lady but these worlds burn — i cannot stop the flow - single vibratory wave that goes back into all history the page is turned & is blank a fuller page faces it suggesting quest one face dissolves another takes it place St Reat moves into the space vacated by St Orm rumours of harm bin done him slim chances moonlight romances dog roles (at this point the narrator stands up & begins to speak.) Narrator: stirred the leaves are come to this land (as he talks the stage darkens except for a small blue spot focussed on his face & a large red one full figure on St Reat.) Narrator: sounds we walked in before the last death visited the world Chorus: (offstage) weary walking to you Narrator: where the wind blows out of the corners of the mind, (he turns his head towards St Reat) i do know you, how you dwelt in that place filled with questions — the rest, written in a book, destroyed my childhood, began this drifting focusless twist of speech i you reach towards St Reat. (the spotlight on the narrator goes out. St Reat is left alone, slowly the lighs come up. a large tree on a raised platform dominates the left side of the stage, a circular black tarpaulin covers the right half, wrinkled & dirty as if simply thrown there, a small circular scrim is suspended in mid-air above it. the few leaves on the tree should move as if a wind is blowing from stage right to stage left. St Reat lies down under the tree, as he does so the lights on the right half of the stage go down so that it is darker than the left. St Reat tosses restlessly, as if in pain, a blue spotlight is thrown onto the scrim.) Chorus: (off-stage) tumble tongue, fishface, sayer of dreams, comer in nightmares screaming & babbling, slime nose & green lip, dribbler of phrases, symbols & spewing, blood cougher, swamp dweller, loon. (the wind increases, a few white lights (no more than 2 or 3) appear. St Reat cries out unintelligibly in his sleep, a cloaked figure appears but says nothing, his robe moves suggesting gestures, the lights on the left half of the stage go down to the same level as those on the right, the blue spot goes out. the cloaked figure disappears, the lights go out.) darkness love is spoken of distance & pain (the author appears on stage, he is holding a copy of The Martyrology Book 1 in his hands reading it to himself in an almost inaudible mumble, an occasional phrase or line escapes his lips.) Author: years a^o » , , , flew away. into , that other world passed (he turns the page & looks up suddenly at audience.) Badlands! (gestures at page) good lines, reminds me of the time ma, pa, dea & me drove thru dinosaur country outside Drumheller. (looks down at book) 53 or 4? (he continues to read, a large pageant begins to take place, silently, on the stage, a robed figure enters a town square, he is given a sword by the citizens who then depart, a figure dressed as a snake appears, the snake & the man fight, the snake being absorbed eventually into the body of the man. lights out briefly, lights up on children playing, a fire is started, two of the three children on stage die in the flames, the surviving child grows older, a woman appears who embraces him. they lie down, lights out briefly, the man & the woman & a child are standing stage centre, they embrace, he departs, lights out briefly a robed figure appears in a town square, the citizens flock around him but do nothing, eventually they lose interest & drift away the robed man is alone on stage as the lights go out. thru all of this the author continues to read to himself, his continuous murmur is interrupted by the following phrases (the actor should pace himself as he sees fit): never learned to dance to my voice no matter how they speak tongues move their heads shifting that phase of being called your name & grant you rest never the same occupied another names the silent place a speech1 begins & ends THE END a book of saints (where the s ain't s)imple as all that11 This page intentionally left blank This page intentionally left blank out of the west the best rises out of the east the beast Leviathan Utnapishtim s potential nemesis a cloud of dust & cliche in its sashay with the day-to-day conversea in ation minor variation recapitulation of a to z themes t hem e or e a thrd yrs a vow the e makes with the 1 or a capitulation riddle read for writers: cap it! what? — ulation — ululation of its wake roused from depths the deep double e threads our speech full power of the beast noise voice we cling to silence Thunder Bay roar & crash the storms made echoed off the cliffs so loud you thot the giant'd wake slept over the lake millenia trees had covered him earth filled his pores my mother'd hide in dread took me to bed with her protector from the storm St Orm we've not forgotten you you speak with voice of wind power to bend the limbs of trees & man blow down anything stands in the way of your word's truth spoke with force against the coarse lie we call our 'civilization' 8 so i sing stupified by speech brought under the spell eyear can bring ought e e ing thought she sleeps thing emerges from the deep the faceless dream dreamt dreamer ter or entered world of shifting imagery we try to freeze make shiftless because we feel less than stored imagery's full weight torn apart too often that divisiveness an isolation to protect the feared for work valued as self is valued defended as you would your life 'he laid it down for art' does art thank us? 8 Noel Coward in the 1950s 'why must the show go on?' the 'noble soul in torment' one does grow bored with recognizing the romanticization self-aggrandisement of one's own pain we all fall prey to you address the problems as they rise prize what is most human as worth the struggle the will to better your self & others hate that poverty of spirit ignorance breeds Hannah Arendt speaking of Eichmann 'the face of evil is ordinary' we build it up look for it in cops & robbers morality plays ignore its presence in the day-to-day out of our own naivete the distortion or ignoring of what is obvious (that structural scale must remain human) leads to monumentalization whatever the political belief the ordinary man or woman is forgotten because they are not known sentimentalized or swept aside noone takes the time to talk to them noonet t t t t t t seven crosses for our lack of humanity (akes) seven crosses for our arrogance & pride (he ime) seven crosses for our lack of humility (o alk o) seven crosses for the people swept aside (hem 'd in then am id St Noise the voices ignorance such lack of knowing starts there a beginning only a tentative law or exception lets the self reveal itself we claim despite our fear a recognition of the other & the other scale & presence world composed of friends openness to change condition that remains most human continues a continuum flows thru the arm into the hand wields the brush or pen over the keys you in makes of it a whole w & complete) 000 Ijrs tmn qlz t v y all the way thru surkb horizontal stroke j'i'sle desire w i'll to be created & create struggle be pulled out under your feet fate mete or meter absolute adherence to them omen tstruth you create not in the image of your self tho self be present a kind of detritus or minutiae selves are many as the mood shifts the work grows beyond the pettiness of your expectations a way takes you waiteighted in the struggle moving november 78 Warren to Admiral: how are you? Admiral: just fine settling down south of the line again below the rail road takes you tracks in the tacking back & forth of living deccmber 17th four more to the sun's nadir solstice old Sol & St Ice in the wintry grey days an' nex' year just around the bend the wind blows the dead leaves into the air again falling down one more round in the cycle a life the poem reaches its own end conclusion drawn back into the round of voices speech & print word sprint for immortality 'we all die anyway' human counting the days until the second millenium seven thousand six hundred & eighty four goodbye then St Reat goodbye then St And other voices push their choices on me we meet again in the great noise among the languages the breathing end of one dream beginning of another other 'o there!' the december 17th 1978 This page intentionally left blank uage (equation to be understood as such) 7th year the cells renewed 21 the saints'songs first were sung in cycles where c carries the 3 weight creates 'a writer's language' write from the 2nd phrase of my life speaks seek the mythical my thical thycal mi fa so lati do ani mal breaks up takes up growled utterance learns to speak again 'language animal' identical realities 'said' (different ways) reach to reaffirm thru speech relationships between the self & others scrapturous visions saints emerge tho i saw these same faces early in my first phrase's speaking (age 6) summer mornings i'd escape before my family'd wake H Section Wildwood Park singing my heart straight up at that Winnipeg prairie sky at you Lord at the saints i knew lived there 9 leaving my head til 16 one day looked up at that cloud range a kind of joy took me perception you were all still there if only i could once again sing to you & i have done destined to run the length of this 2nd phrase times beyond these i cannot imagine clear spring day 5 M minus o 1 D (& counting) deserted freeway 409 cable the kabbala i'm coming home left at 27 & again at 50 took the Gore HIJKL& more funereal procession pacing me is fun real? 9 echoed in reverse previous lines parked at Claireville drove onto the maps a different landscape where my head ends friends & the unknown begins interpenetration inter interface integers of place & time the flowers in the garden shift in the half light of dusk Josie sings 'it grieves my heart so' brought back always to this point friends fr i ends in that we that yes say what you will i could sit here now til morning listening looking swallows fly home to their nest above the front door the purple pink & white flowers hours of a peace i've grown to love looking out now over the valley stretches below the front porch of Josie's home it is always prayer occurs a thank you a wish for Josie's happiness all my friends my own & ellie wish she were here simply to share caring we have come to value the simplest things reassert themselves love passion honour make up the will thrill of living we have found together each in our own ways seek to carry forward to the end of our days the music in the night does not fill the air it is part of a fuller sound birds bedding down calling back & forth or murmuring to themselves crickets by the pond wind blows up out of the west moving & shifting the leaves above my head speaking i cannot articulate as out across the valley lights come on five that i can count one for each finger on my hand & the sky is so full of white & blue & dark 'night' does not encompass what is happening finally the birds are still stars now visible as the last light of the sun is gone one band of light across the south horizon even the mind is still words stop 'city' out of the sleeping body dreams erupt days pass an afternoon reading in the backyard shade nameless feeling fills the body thinking constantly of friends lives we've lived together what is it makes up the poem journeynal a longing work realating of realations hip's shape between the letter & the letter word & worlds of friends & where the words begin & end feelings & the way you say them all alongingly the way which is the day to day life of writing being who you are my saynity ignoring all the cliches woe & madliness sexu & sexme all at or r which is to say the be natural life one tries to lead driving south towards Toronto mid-july bird against the windshield omen another case of disorientation in the 20th century radio playing 'what's the matter with' — say that before? — sun muted cloud visible particular yellowness in the sky diffused above a line of trees (wordlot) the bird fluttered to the side of the road mist on the fields among the clumps of bushes St Patrick's spire pokes up over the trees of Wildfield for weeks butterflies flew against my car fell afoul the road i was going too fast somewhere i no longer remember asleep (later) i dreamt me & all my friends these past 12 years headed out to eat at THE REALITY found it closed & boarded upset because REALITY was not where they supposed it to be i couldn't understand them told them this was always happening 'REALITY is always closing down opens up again somewhere else' woke smiling & laughing sensing some solution come to the beginning at last a line at a time worked backwards as it had to be reasoned & to be at the end heart full of feeling form eta phorm artificial one said a labour of love i said always in answer to such questions responding as best one can the poem continues shaped by that vision complexity dissolves into simplicity synaptic junctions clicking into phase a phrase you pass thru in the middle of a spring day nothing on my mind but the acknowledgement we are all part of as writing is the thing carries the whole soul forward i am speaking singing cars roll by streets fill with traffic 6 o'clock on a tuesday night in June 12 noon on a tuesday in mid-august a wish that i could write on thru to you so many things the body wants to say the mind / the heart / the nerves / the blood / the hand move as one together 'a command of language' (he has something to say) 'a command of language' move as one together the mind / the heart / the nerves / the blood / the hand so many things the body wants to say to you a wish that i could write on thru 12 noon on a tuesday in mid-august 6 o'clock on a tuesday night in June streets fill with traffic cars roll by i am speaking singing carries the whole soul forward as writing is the thing we are all part of the acknowledgement nothing on my mind but a spring day in the middle of a phrase you pass thru synaptic junctions clicking into phase complexity dissolves into simplicity shaped by that vision the poem continues responding as best one can always in answer to such questions i said a labour of love artificial one said form eta phorm heart full of feeling to be at the end reasoned & as it had to be worked backwards a line at a time come to the beginning at last This page intentionally left blank every(all at(toge(forcver)ther) once)thing 10 10 this s s s s s s s ss s s s S s s s s ss s s s if f f surely y y y y no o y o 11 o oo o o o o o o o O o O . M—I ^M •-H '-M ^ U-l ^-W t ^ ^-M U-< ^ C/3 C/> C^ OS S S (/) cn ^ ^ C/5 CAl " 1/5 c^ V5 ^ ^ - en C/) Crt * C^ ^ ^ SS „ * 11 ^ ^J ^ 22 'C -fn ^-> T 4-> T .> « tt t t t t t t t t t t t t how w w t t t t t t t t t t t t t t w w w w w w now w w w w w w w w w w w w w w in nn n n n n n n n n n only y y y y y y the e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e ee e ee ee ee ee e e ee e e ee e ee o e e c ee e e e ee e e e ce faces s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s ss s s s s s pile e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e ( - how w w w w w w grew w w w w w w w w living w w g g g father r r r r r r r "looking oh h h g g h nothing § g g just t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t saint t t t t t t t t t t t t redwing g t t c^ " C/5 C^i en ™ 8 ^ S c^ C/3 & thus ir> C C/5 F p^ f <-t TT T T T T T '"'" t T T rt it ^ s s s s s s s saint t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t end d d d this s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s ss s s fortunate e ee ec ee e ee e e e e e e ee e wanting g g g g g if f f the e e e e e e e e e e e eee ee e e father r r r rr e r r r r r r 1 1 1 1 1 e e r r "all e 1 eee e speak k k k lady y y y y walk k k k k k who o o oo o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o measure e e e e e ee e o e e o e e e e ee e e e e e e e e ee e e e e e lift for we open father the who fathers 'in arose clearly when live what 'older 'oh the later drift mid-summer death saint now insane the all the e awoke what now to as end she 'oh looking i left early third is sleepless how two i moving what find tiny so found mid-november this as all scraptures this ah this nothing's thus This page intentionally left blank V V dis pair birds birdens a bunch of frozen d's gesticulation books 4 & 5 & books 1 to 3 (morning)^ means i am the major question of the a.m. 9 os & one that seems to wrinkle seems unformed like a thot a footnote or consideration 12 a join in the pleasure ring them again or (the greek accordion) the joining of dis pair however they care to carry themselves as omen or the double you know you'll meet walking down the street towards you a ranger st. moves out beyond one into the world you picked up this book today read the lines i wrote seated 'cross the table from Mary writing in her apartment on St George the things we talked about (her writing some joke or two shared read me from the memoir she is working on) flow on unnoticed our bones already rotted as you read this poem far enough beyond the present i cannot imagine you death pokes its head into the text stage managing as always & departs the heart of the process impossible to convey tho i wish to cups of coffee drunk & cigars smoked are not, finally, the book you hold place the pen on the notebook page once more 12 it is all too self-conscious like life itself the two equated in a single f P t ex act type set & book born clonely (contradictions in a single term) more than a pair carries these fixed gestures towards you i am moving before you get the chance to move writing out the book's already written present's past tense in the present s work outdistancing the theory made old as me by time essayed a poem with all the process prose is the play in line a thrust defines forward back10 September 6th 1980 September 6th somewhere in a head ahead (i waited two years for these last lines to come 'carrying it all the time like a baby') This page intentionally left blank 1976-1980 This page intentionally left blank blue bluer blur A Note On Reading THE MART YROLOGY Book v Book v was structured on the idea of the chain — chain of thot, chain of images, chain of events — so that in the writing when a branching of thot occurred i would try to follow all the chains that opened up. Hence, in the text, what may appear like footnote numbers actually represent reading choices. As a reader you can continue thru the chain of ideas you're already following, or you can choose, at different points, to diverge & follow the chain of ideas the various numbered options represent (the numbers corresponding to the twelve different chains in the text). This means, of course, that no two readers will necessarily have the same experience of Book v, tho they will walk away with a similar sum. The gordian knot that Book v seems to become is also an untying of the first four books. In Book vi (which is coming into existence despite published statements to the contrary) this leads on into a number of independent, but conceptually & thematically linked, books. A book which is books & the chains of thot that thot will eventually lead into & out of. Toronto, May 3oth 1982 sections of the Martyrology Book v (some in earlier drafts) were first printed in the following magazines —Aurora, Capilano Review, Rune and grOnk — and in Therafields' Books Therqfields: 15 th Anniversary. earlier drafts of the ends of Chain i and Chain 3 appeared in their notebook context and numbering in In England Now that Spring (Aya Press, Toronto, 1979). an earlier draft of Chain 9 was published by Coach House Press in their Manuscript Edition Series under its earlier numbering as Chain 8. Chain 10 was published as a mini-pamphlet by CURVD H&Z. Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Nichol,B.R, 1944-1988 The martyrology, book 5 Facsimile ed. Poems. ISBN 0-88910-251-1 I. Title. PS8527.I32M331994 C81T.54 C93-094756-8 PR9199.3.N53M33 1994 Typeset in Bembo. The paper is acid-free Zephyr Antique laid. First printed in the autumn of 1982 in an edition of 1000 copies. Another 500 copies were printed in January, 1994 by the printers at the Old Coach House, 401 (rear) Huron Street, Toronto.