i-a counting. This page intentionally left blank the rruRtyRoloqy Book 6 Books 1978-1985 Bp nichol The Coach House Press Toronto copyright © bpNichol, 1987 ISBN 0-88910-319-4 'One's pestered in these days by so many 'ologies We thought we would fain see the tale of our foes; A niche of your own in the new Martyrologies You'd earn if you'd only go halves in our woes.1 author unknown - quoted in C.C.Bombaugh's Oddities and Curiosities of Words and Literature 'If I don't learn to shut my mouth I'll soon go to hell' - Christopher Okigbo (1932-1967) This page intentionally left blank these books are This page intentionally left blank Sain Albans Road Saint Andrews Boulevard Saint Aubyns Crescent Saint Bartholomew Street Saint Clair Gardens Saint Clarens Avenue Saint Cripsins Drive Saint David Walk Saint Enoch's Square Saint Johns Place San Carmello Way Christ (i.e. St.) sections inter pretations pen etrations at the corner of mundane & sacred snow in my shoe & dreams of Who? of some other, higher, life This page intentionally left blank Book I IMPERFECTION: A Prophecy This page intentionally left blank straight as the crow flies arrow This page intentionally left blank part I 'Salute Andronicus and Junias, my kinsmen, and my fellow prisoners, who are of note among the apostles, who also were in Christ before me.' Romans 16: 7 This page intentionally left blank did you see Him then upon the mount? we saw Him and did you see Him then in the hills of Galillee? we saw Him boat water sail in a corricle over the sea in madness in a corricle over the sea in grief 'forgive us our tongues of dust our lips of stone forgive us1 under the sun on a blue sea in the salt wind sail water boat skin wrinkle brown hand tiller eye robe wind skin beard hand brown hair tiller hand arm wrinkle wind sun eye robe brown skin sky boat brown tiller robe wind wrinkle eye forgive us for words said forgive us for words unsaid forgive us who loved You silently forgive us the day we failed You Lord forgive us the day we failed ourselves failing You Lord in a boat on the sea under the sun in the sky beyond us forgive us so that this way we went & this that way & back this way & that following Joseph & did you find him in time yes & the voyage yes mistmistmistmistmist mistmistmistmistmist mistmistmistmistmist boatmistmistmistmist avewavewavewavewav mistmistmistmistmist mistmistmistmistmist mistmistmistmistmist mistboatmistmistmist avewavewavewavewav mistmistmistmistmist mistmistmistmistmist mistmistmistmistmist mistmistboatmistmist avewavewavewavewav i have not known Thee or loved Thee enough Lord who would seal his lips up against Thee would not make my stand in the marketplace hid back amongst the shadows as they lead Thee away tho You smiled at me let me know You understood the dreadful fear within me which has no place with Thee i have not understood Thy suffering in the simplest terms Lord how You let them know Thy spirit & Thy name how You let them laugh & jeer at Thee firm within Thyself let them kill Thee & did not curse them i have understood so little Lord in my cringing smallness my weaknesses I have indulged Lord did not understand how they weakened me until they lead You away Lord & i was silent did not strike out did not lead a multitude against them as i should have could have had i but faced the fear & littleness within me rainmistmist rainmiboatst raimnistmist raimniboatst ramiinstmist ramiinboatst rmaiisntmist rmaiisboatst mriasitnmist mriasiboatst mirsatimnist mirsatboatst misrtamiinst misrtaboatst mistrmaiisnt mistrmboatnt mistmriasitn mistmrboattn mistmirsatin mistmiboatin mistmisrtain mistmiboatin mistmistrain mistmiboatin asleep in a boat above the deep waters waters waters waters waters we have left Thee behind Lord, left ourselves in that leaving, far from truth from being true to Thee, fled, in our fear, over the sea, forever, i can never forgive me, we can never forgive us, the day we fled that last chance to serve Thee we left us behind Lord, with Thy body, on a cross, saw them hammer the nails in, with the others, so many before You we had watched bleed to death, so many deaths we have spoke against in silence, as we did again, railed against them wtih downcast eyes & turned backs, railed against them & abandoned Thee the waves the waves the waves the waves the waves the waves the waves the waves against the boat against the boat against the boat against the boat against the boat against the boat against the boat so where did you go? this way &that & only ourselves crazy in the vast blue of the sky the sea sometimes in the night frightened by my own cowardice things i should've said or done dreams the man in black walking towards me the buildings falling i am powerless to stop him tho his face is mine his eyes are mine i am watching it all happen wordless sometimes in the morning waking the boat is rocking he is watching me & i say nothing i say less & less think more & more my lips dry yes as much from stubborness as lack of desire set sail in despair into the midst of at night the dreams of daytime & my silence my inabilities my gulls gills . (& in the distance hills) This page intentionally left blank part 2 'having heard the story of the giant Buamundus in the happiness of a feast, jestingly called his son by the giant's name. Ordericus Vitalis Historia Ecclesiastica IV, 212 (as quoted in The Lost Literature of Medieval England by R.M. Wilson) This page intentionally left blank B U A M U N D U US being more than most being of some parts larger (the girth) being loud of mouth & large of appetite being proud of his size his strength BOO!! set a scare AMONG US l)myth 2)legend 3)rumour 4)truth simply no way of knowing certain: was talked about uncertain: what was said certain: a jest uncertain: whether he would have thot it funny n t u o BUAM came there a i NDUS to that cross Christianity then in England circa 65 a.d. among the saints the disciples the crowds that gathered Andronicus Junias Buamundus us as us history as in we have one remembered forgotten all at once & together the absence inseparable from the presence gone so much longer Lord than You were with us being drunk one night pissed in a stream overflowed the whole town flooded no one would speak of it fearing they had wet their beds a sign the witches still said of inconstancy this & other tales before his conversion was said to have slept with various women possible as he was small for his size (source of some shame tho for his situation lack of other giants a blessing) rumoured to have impregnated all the women in one village at their request was actually shy but in demand longed for the company of ordinary folks other people Briefly: Unhappy And Misunderstood Until Near Disciples. Ultimately (& this stands outside the known pattern) it is their Story part 3 Esperaunce in the worlde nay. The world variethe every day. Esperaunce en dieu in hym is all, For he is above fortunes fall.' Anonymous 'in the roofe of the hyest chawmbre in the gardynge1 at the Duke of Northumberland's house at Leconfield, as quoted in J.G. Russell's The Field of Cloth of Gold (London 1969.) This page intentionally left blank night in the fields under the stars sleeping sleeping sleeping Andronicus shadow stone shadow stone shadow stone shadowstone stone shadow shadow stone Junias shadow stone shadowstone Buamundus stone shadow stone shadow stone shadow stone shadow circle stone circle cross stone cross circle cross circle stone & u P across & across d o w n & three one + ONE + one equals we sing Thy praises Lord, talk endlessly of Thy sacrifice Thy greatness Lord is sung of in this far land by many who never knew You in Your humanness, Your frailties we are shadows Lord, cast out from Thee, fallen upon this distant shore among other shadows, Your orchads our voices echo over the rocks & trees & in our echoing Lord we praise Thee but did you see them upon the mountain tops? no or in the hills of Albion? no gone & forever gone gone without hope of returning gone in human body gone into death into heaven into gone beyond reach of talking gone beyond reach of singing in our prayers listening the wind the leaves bird songs among the shifting, creaking were said to have visited many villages preaching a sight remarkable for its strangeness Andronicus depicting Buamundus as a convert from the ranks of the Green Man who now declared Christ & Jehovah greater than the deities & godlings of these parts tho many questioned the effectiveness of one prayer one God whether He could possibly answer them all (most having come from large families) the idea took hold some rumours of strange encounters in these times a woman returning home late saw the giant naked dancing in a field accompanied by three equally naked girls Buamundus declared another giant guilty tho none were known in those parts certain: nothing uncertain: they converted many of the small villages & isolated holdings in the southwest of most of what was then Britain certain: by 75 A.D. Christianity had spread thru most of Britain uncertain: what these three had to do with it. 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 a.d. a description then, some listing of their last years, their deaths from here of these this This page intentionally left blank part 4 'bran, crow bran vras, raven bran dre, rook1 from A CORNISH-ENGLISH DICTIONARY edited by Morton Vance This page intentionally left blank . (some history sketched) JOB S O . L HAGIOGRAPHY C AGE O NO A WORLD DEITIES DEUS IS O A.D S N V CHRIST CHRIST I HE O N U R . (a sermon: fragments) did this thing as i have told you of which if there is any man or woman can say different step forward so in my grieving it came to me a penance i could do in this world for he who tries to enter into heaven shall open the gates of hell you must renounce your claim on heaven to enter it you must enter into this world to claim heaven take up our words as we took up His others of His words your conviction convinces do not be quick to rebuke or condemn lest in the words leaving your lips you echo yourself (geography) unknown ocean britain some islands in between this &that east the sun rises west the sun sets death & the afterlife journeys into the spirit world . (a prophecy) above the village atop the hill these things said: we will not see it in our lifetime nor in our children's lifetime nor in the lifetimes of their children's children but in the time of all their children this loving & this forgiveness will be everywhere until we will have founded the peaceful Kingdom God intended for us in this world . (a further geography [hindsight]) the unknown was/is (at least partially) Canada later The New World1 where 'the streets were paved with gold' (trace memory of the afterlife Valhalla heaven the world of faerie over the North Atlantic (a voyage) the owl & the pussycat & . (the reasoning) there were rumours or legends 'the lands beyond the lands we know' peopled it was supposed a further penance because they (Andronicus [the owl] & Junias [the pussycat]) could not know peace in this world nor (possibly) heaven (in another) set out with Buamundus no maps under a yellow sun in a green boat on a blue sea . (details) pillars of shimmering glass (in fact more pyramidal in shape & made of ice) islands of fire in the cold (volcanic) monsters (whales, etc.) wind & sea (wind & sea) (flashback) Andronicus seized the opportunity for a last sermon gathering the villagers on the beach (mostly rocks tho some small pebbles) addressed them from the boat where the three travellers sat much joking in the crowd about how Buamundus might sink the ship with his weight the theme Andronicus chose: 'how faith keeps us afloat' (more details) headed north in order to go west (rumours an island dotted lines on the few extant maps . (theories) known (sort of)' a giant slept on an island in the North Atlantic discovered Brendan awoke & lent him a hand circa 500 a.d. unknown (really): whether he was Buamundus theory 1: Buamundus quarreled with Andronicus & Junias somehow thrown overboard survived on that island 400 years & more (the lifespan of giants not being known) theory 2: Buamundus requested to be let out BUAMOUTNDUS stands guard over this bleak region assisting Christian travellers on their quests theory 3: an older giant Chronos slept there Buamundus knew this & avoided the island having heard the legend as a child a century or more before theory 4: none of the above . (maps) c A N A D A the boat < the boat the boat (n 0 w) none of this was (of course) recorded . (biographical note) variants exist (the same information juggled differently) the boat B R I T A I N (t h e n) viz: Bron the castrate fisher king who sleeps & guards the grail Bran (Chronos by another name) on that island sleeping Brendan as mentioned Brim (portmanteau - an older god in these parts [i.e. Canada]) all the above linked to the Sleeping Giant (Lake Superior, Thunder Bay) Buamundus Bua being possible variant spelling of Bron &/or Bran mundus the world & being as he was/is a world figure (again Atlas Bran/Chronos by a 3rd name) held the world on his shoulders formulaic spelling = flmodllS bua i.e. bua is under in the under world the underworld carries the world on its back Faerie & the Isle of Avalon (where Bron sleeps) etc. etc. these & other probable systems facts (the unknown) boat shore water Q: what shore? Q: which boat? (this the whole question of discovery i.e. 'Who's on first?') Q: who's in the boat? (one -»- one + ?) Q: which body of water? . (the gravity of the situation) earth relative to the sun the sun relative to the galaxy's heart both rotating the galaxy relative to other galaxies forming a larger cluster still rotating the whole thing moving outwards from a central point or probable beginning no longer perceivable parallel: the soul/self relative to the body the body relative to some companion's heart (family/lover/friend) both revolving /changing relative to other people forming larger units of selves (neighbourhoods/towns/cities/etc.) still changing the whole thing everyone growing older & dying from a central point or beginning no longer perceivable application: miles from anywhere in terms of the known in terms of a language or cultural grouping the two or three of them of mixed racial & tribal origin moving too far outward from their centres to even perceive them . (possible scenario) Buamundus is with them. They travel inland along a huge waterway, thru vast lakes, past giant moving walls of water, to a final landing on a tree covered shore. Here Buamundus falls asleep (this being a common disease with giants (numerous incidents recorded)) & cannot be awakened. Andronicus & Junias continue on. They move south &, as old men, find their way among the Mayans (carvings of men with Semitic noses having been discovered in Mayan ruins). No record of their preaching is preserved nor is their death recorded. Buamundus sleeps to this day. . (another scenario) Travelling inland they discover the Sleeping Giant (their second). Careful not to wake him they continue westward, Buamundus building scattered circles of earth & stone along the way (such being found in Ontario, Alberta (possible proof of a return to earlier beliefs on Buamundus's part)). Eventually Andronicus & Junias part ways with him (his views seeming, to them, heretical). Buamundus wanders north falling asleep, is frozen, eventually, his body drifting out to sea (deep source for the Frankenstein legend or, latterly, The Thing &/or the Captain America of the 1960's). Andronicus & Junias travel over the rockies to the west coast & once more set out to sea. Here all surmises become too entangled in tribal variants for even a tentative outline to have any validity. . (addition) the facts: a) names of Andronicus & Junias (more commonly spelt Junia) b) early founding of the Christian church in England (Claudius1 decree in 42 a.d. to snuff it out) c) name of Buamundus d) reference to the sleeping giant in Grail legends & the legend of Brendan e) the Sleeping Giant, Thunder Bay, Lake Superior, Ontario, Canada (visible from the front porch of my childhood home) f) various myths too numerous to mention what it all adds up to . (the end) Andronicus - apostle Junias — apostle Buamundus ~ giant the known guessed at thus conclusions &/or theories viz: science & history myth & legend some sense of the components of reality religion being a combination of the real (i.e. re(a)l) & the region formulaic spelling = re(a)l + region = re^(a)lgion where (a) = the fleeing centre the probable beginning barely perceived translated (nonetheless) as T self at the centre makes re^(al)lgion = religion the 2 drops away over the years (lack of a written tradition to preserve it) & the i shifts yielding religion a region of the real uncharted (largely) open to misconstruction & fanaticism which does not yield to science or history (in that sense) thru which the named shadows of Andronicus, Junias & Buamundus flicker but are never glimpsed 1978-79 Book II A BOOK OF HOURS This page intentionally left blank for Michael Ondaatje This page intentionally left blank Hourl 10:35 to 11:35 p.m. met a physic on the road asked him so it is with journeys one is drawn moon & sun earth & stars larger figures & rhythms our hours collections of random thots or meditations med a tation on de road asthim cold reason sick in bed X days viz: this poem or NOT altered consciousness alerted consciousness alert to the moment's movement in this room language is the inside of the head or the mouth opens ifeel that comparisons between various earthly states i.e. you know life unhappy death happy CATEGORIES gory cats in his hats do you like my hat? i do not like (as in bad grammar) i.e. i don't do it like (for purpose of comparison (comparidaughter)) birth other minor jokes cinemacism ie not to be confused with cynicism or making the right movThey're all watching me!' paranoia or the old narcissus bit word drift wordrobe wandering thru the clothes closet of the (brain? no!) memory 'this fits me this doesn't1 throwing out the pants that you bought age 23 visions of poetry a particular voice particular obsession confused with posession First Saint: Who was that? Second Saint: Last night? life is continual moods progressions of the self selves little s elves viz: the usual language play access to the world of faerie the real rhythm is the rhythm of the hours progression of the days years you have left for your utanikki (cf. The Martyrology Bk V) what the hell it is after all a long* work (*for long1 read 'continual1) -- looking for ways to give it up?) so much for the subjective voice March 27th 1689 Basho leaving Edo February llth 1979 a pen still marks time pursues the same insight out (difficulties of the journey ~ records of dead friends -- Frank this year - Carl & Mark so long ago - others ahead? - the seasons - coincidences of nature & the mind) this time everything rhymes a bullet in the head & a broken heart art? i'm just rolling track 79 the old straight line narrative to the deep north the wood door too turning into a wall what is 'the easy way out'? definition of electric poetry: 'He's just plugging in!' definition of a collection of electric poetry: 'He's just plugging along.' art: do you have to 'like1 it? what changes the world is the world changing simple ideas (it would be nice, for instance, if everybody really did love one another i.e. no more of this sentimental bullshit, idealizing of the thighs, breasts, cock, etc. of the beloved) on the other hand - what about 'realism'? (for 'realism1 read 'negative sentimentality') as if everything depended on the little brown stool yuko - the temporary, changeable element jitsu - the substance kyo - the essence Nikko March 30th 1689 lodged in an inn at the foot of the mountain (wrote poems) Nichol February llth 1979 mounted on his foot at the in stant dis lodged (writing poems) 290 years of past tense (approximately) jitsu — kyo ~ ryuko continuing the search for absolute moments of existence let me get this straight' kyo — ryuko — jitsu THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF... ...clutching the panting saint to his heaving breast. What is the secret?1 he gasped. Saint Orm grabbed his arm &, twisting around, threw him over his hip onto the floor. 'This is the secret!' he snarled. but something definitely seems to have changed here! Yes!! I was looking for a completely different tone. various faces in the shrubbery various voices crying to get out this is the human condition - we're all looking for release P = O + l=E + l l = T - 4 = R-2 = Y-9 or 16 = 15 -i- A = 5 -i- K = 20 - D = 18 - B = 24 -1 a kiss dream build i (me) give to a on which is the poem the hour rotation of the earth relative to the sun 'I have an houres talke in store for you* (William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar) which is to say i have put it away behind me a translation only no conclusions no the number of lights still on in the apartment building across the way is less than when this poem began 24 or so then now 8 'the hour is getting late' 'its nice to finish something on time!' Hour 2 2:35 to 3:35 p.m. 'temperature irregularly high recently* 'he's in heat1 Here in this too (paper) is the parcel of hours: the poems. relax into yourself no images at all some awareness of neural activity these are the daily doldrums the still ness at the centre of nothing moves the her again some shifts as the real drifts into focus mmmmmmmm pausing (stationary) identification i.e. I ME MYSELF JE MOI-MEME etc. maybe one just drifts off to sleep SILENT such a noisy word May 10th 1899 Masaoka Shiki sick in bed May llth 1899 behind the fallen peonies Basho's face! February 12th 1979 in two day's time my record in verse! my grandmother was 14 when Shiki wrote his lines these things 'the face of the earth' 'an ear to the ground' 'the bowels of the earth' mother ~ walk all over her body never quite get her together ~ nature -earth Shiki in his bed 2 10 years earlier Basho walking the back road never quite get her together 'if you drive the freeways you miss the view' choose to walk all over her body like a metaphor like a simile assimilated into her skin at death wandertutoringing bell in the head at dusk each night pray for light to come insight ttttone art yr ooooooooooooo a rift in the earth's crust flakey pie-eyed at the world logic logy a whole word (this is a large task — i.e. collecting all potential signifieds. why bother? you are looking for a whole word, one that contains all its meanings, i.e.: QUESTION AS HYPOTHESIS what makes them mean ings if they're theoretically conisni? . *. meaning * content 'what is the mean ing of life?' i.e. the middle ing (as in sings) surely not this meaning that i hear 'he meaned a lot & then he died' 'the earth swallowed him up' (mouth to mouth & no resucitation)) 'with my temperature irregularly high recently' not a martyr only logy makes it hard to get her together gathering steam 'a life of it sown' 'couldn't stop dreaming of roaming, roving the coast up & down' slower slowed at the still time the brain rhymes different paths ganglia synapses 'There is this silence About the sickbed* Q: How can the real be out of focus? A: Easy! THE REAL: Act I Scene II: selected hours framed by silences (i.e. love, work & other non-writing) Historical Q: did you get well soon Masaoka Shiki? Hour 3 1:35 p.m. to 2:35 p.m. history rhymes time's a vision EPis- the sea gulls & billows day stretches on if the road never bends here there almost everywhere perception gathers life leads & steps on your toes the ship rolls with 'but her* *but him1 'and' conversations what do you do if someone interrupts you? five minutes lost from the poem five minutes found for a life so what your saying is & keeps on ising (islands in mist - white caps thru a hedge of hairy heads rainy panes of glass ~ back in B.C. this A.D.) every poem is simply the history of a writing what i am most aware of are the contradictions 'if you can't heckle a Canadian poet who can you heckle?1 — anonymous West Coast Literary Presses Benefit Reading February 23rd 1979 everything is coinci & dense EPI centres sodes why do we have to 'get it together' yeah yeah tele ana GRAMS thot is always a crisis centre 'the facts is the facts' A. I must B. Go down to the Cs (again) pound for pound that old narwhale cissus blows it out his blowhole its the top of my head ringed in clouds 'he's looking a bit peakM lately1 tension ocean passion 'let me get this strait' you're looking for the opening when the skull is the five senses four sight three nody two 'n one whistles sea skulls wings at the windows JEP1 calls & culls you got to answer 1. the low cull 2. the long distance cull EPI logue cure dis traction dis hold the actions has on the brain of dis traction waves on rocks waves in the car waves in the window as you move farther away from her vague pronoun references of memory 'you remember Epi!1 'who?1 wave ring the boat wave ring heart wave ring image of the selves start their focus 'that son of a bitch really focus!1 for us the sea mother EPI sea sodes margin redraw everywhere the language gathers father famili ar(e spells spill out of land's cape we disembark on Hour 4: 9:35 to 10:35 a.m. absolute absence of horizon viz: a jumble of rooftops & branches of trees up to my knees in needs nothing to do with anything but the urge to continue as a continent as an edge of land or sea time: its all changing even as i look at it 'the old neighbourhood just isn't the same' 'he doesn't write the way he used to' THE LANGUAGES OF PAOof one man changing i don't mean English 'A man must try to whip order into a yelping pack of probabilities' Time advances, conditions change.1 older by the minute minuter by the hour big hand little hand which hand has the pea a shell game shuck your body & leap into eternity The Mathematics of Sex i.e. one into one makes two sometimes 'she takes math control pills' viz: one into one makes zero 'put some lead in your pencil' or you can't write the future 's changing he can't get his clock up automatic mathematic traumatic ma in the attic comedy stepped from her body into time clock sucker gives it the head 'get the lead out' (now its slowing him down) trying to reach the edge Scene 1: A busy street about 10 in the morning. St Real is walking by. Captain Poetry addresses him. Captain Poetry: Cigarette? St Reat: (patting his pockets) Sorry. Captain Poetry: Match? St Reat: (patting his pockets again) Sorry. Captain Poetry: Time? St Reat: (rolling up his sleeves to show his empty wrists) Sorry! SKILL TESTING QUESTION: In the play you have just read, was St Reat correct in his last statement? one into one makes someone dramatic Scene 2: St Orm is winding his watch. We hear a crunch & a sproing. St Orm: Whoops! Damn! Wound it too tight. St Ranglehold: (entering the room) Something wrong? St Orm: My watch is broken! St Ranglehold: (taking a watch out of his pocket) That's okay. I can keep time, rhythms the clock his heart his heels ticked thumped clicked 'let's just drop the whole thing' tick thump click 'i don't have time for this sort of bullshit' thump click tick 'we could save time by forgetting about it' thump c lick click tick thump i.e. The Alphabetics of Sex correction direction erection 'i want some ection!1 'time's come!1 Scene 3: St Raits wanders down a busy street. A man in tudor costume passes by. Another man, dressed like a caveman, & a third man, dressed like an astronaut, also pass him. St Raits: (pausing to scratch his head as they pass) What time is it? langu age old age p age static interference at the edge of space & time light years 'the best years of our lives' image travelling on too small to focus on science fiction or fictional science Probable Systems tricks with time 5/44/43/4 scores between the left hand & the right sleight of hand muse music museum artifacts art facts pitch, melody & 'he's ahead of his time1 'they did it all in Moscow in the 1920's' derivative dervish or ECSTATIC 'doing it at the hourly rate' 'thank you. i had a good time.' Hour 5: 8:35 to 9:35 a.m. so it is the journey draws us or sometimes the return miles of flat land and diffused grey blue cloud at the horizon clusters of farm buildings little clumps of trees sketches the eye catches details stark white garage or henhouse greyed farmhouse behind earth it turns beneath us sky envelops us space all around us us is very small very tiny edge detail almost invisible factors in the universe Zelma one grain elevator almost invisible i's eye almost invisible eye a life it passes earth covers us in & in time forgets us tiny graveyard weatherworn stone Poe's in Baltimore Steve, Kirby, Marshall & me visiting (November 78) smashed tombstones cracked mausoleum Poe's grave moved closer to the gate because of the number of visitors came to see him him's gone hers gone hymns as the hearse drives us away us's all we's black earth with a sprinkling of white snow ice coated wire fences white glare rectangular outlines white glare bushes pushing up thru snow we never dies racial memory confused with heaven confused with reincarnation a landscape in time pick your way thru the shifting faces drifting places of memory 'they tore the old schoolhouse down' or like Ellie returning to Bay Trail, Saskatchewan they'd taken all the buildings away even the sign 'the town i was born in no longer exists' a line of telephone poles wires a line (shorter) of trees Bradwell one elevator 'we need more space' 'we need less space' 'people need space to grow in' pale yellow stubble of frozen wheat darker brown gold of the gravel road stripped red of the barkless telephone pole linear movement of train thru space & time strange drift of passengers thru memory 'i recognize this place1 see is the seed for seen jumble of corrugated steel ten tin silo tops tips tilted at the train everything depends on the red cultivator unmoving in the gold white field (a statement of the fall) loose a fir gain a pine lonely without you or (worse) lonely with you the couple in the next roomette always together tho they don't talk tho they're both cramped lonely why? someone's definition of hell 'Saturday night is the loneliest night of the week' 'gloomy Sunday' 'monday morning i feel bad' weekness 'they want to be buried together' 'they were so close when he died she lost the will to live died three months later' a grave yard a happy yard a yard on down the road a lumber yard by the side of the tracks they bury you two yards down sometimes its your first permanent address Poe moved after death for the convenience of his uninvited guests a journey from this world to the next with stops along the way QUEEN ELIZABETH POWER STATION heading into the train station i'm trying to pick up the local station ill wait until we're stationary 'don't stand still or they'll kill you' 'if you lie down once you'll never get up again' cover you in under earth under sky a place somewhere in space very small very tiny very (for all intents & purposes) invisible circling rotating very stationary in the Saskatoon station 'that's the situation in a nutshell' 'good things come in small packages' space invisible in the crowd flowing from the train seen but unrecognized unknown sitting in the station stationary in the sitting room that's the situation the sitcom very tiny moment insignificant day visible invisibility tiny spot at the galaxy's edge tiny galaxy in the universe ahead & around us th-thatfs it even after the end th'that's all folks Hour 6: 4:35 to 5:35 a.m. sick in bed (three days) temperature irregularly high recently awakened from dream from the image shuffle snow on the ground beyond the door 's all night sap run from the maple trees in buckets ! s all night wind thru the crack in the door 's all night moaning crying is it the dream image the wind in the door the whole nights drift on without you alseep & tossing into dream or nightmare ride across the field of thot the world turns on without you without your words houselights out all up the 7th line only the barnyards lit horses & the cows asleep animal land mouse & skunk & rabbit asleep the dream pushed me out pulled me up into the waking world 'everyone's asleep' a signal toys come to life mice move out along the empty halls paws clutching their tiny tails 'don't make a noise, don't wake them1 awake the living & the dreaming 'he (the rat) is jealous of my poetry... he was a punk poet himself and after he has read it sneers and then eats it' Archy awake the memory & the memoried 'magic words of poof poof piffles make me just as small as...' sniffles awake & breathing whole lives drift by untouched by your feelings your presence along the hall towards the kitchen light thru the crack in the fridge door 'the cat's asleep1 whole centuries drift by you are not alive your thots unrecorded unremarked unneeded animal hands animal faces animal feelings at the base of the brain drawn from in sleep millenia gone millenia to come tiny whiskered faces whispers in the chill light of the room this is the dream time you are one year old you want to go where the animals go in fever forever always in heat every day the store of images increases every day your vocabulary varies hunting for food in the long halls past the sleeping cats across the waxed & polished floors every night the brain throws them up again shuffle from childhood forward awaking startled awaking so slow you forget awaking mid images of dreamed sex tongues touching fingers on the nipples breasts & cock down the corridors of dreamed houses pursuing the longed for face or body absolute moment when the mind loops back on itself eyes closed to the world beyond animal longings enveloping sex swift part & clench of too soft lips 's all night awake excited frightened that close to the bidden forbidden animal heat in the cold night drift unfocussed fear unfocussed desire the inner & the outer worlds 'the turtle lives twixt plated decks' animal strangeness in the long corridors of the house lights out staring out the window white glare snow 5:20 a.m. not yet dawn & the wind blow this is the dream time in heat in the cold quick click of teeth & lick of whiskers whole days drift on without you sick in bed or lost in a fever dream so familiar motion in & out of her dreamed body animal time drifts on without you the days are passing memories so familiar feeling of desire 's all night awake now whole hours drift by without you longing (in the dream) for the self (really) one animal flow thru the whole body drifts by without you asleep you watch it go sailing over the fences the snowy fields above the caves & homes of animals out you Hour 7: 11:35 p.m. to 12:35 a.m. powerless all day loading logs into the truck snow cling the thwuck & thunk driving back & forth one house to the other thru the valley over the hill hook up the generators for the greenhouses save the plants amid the wind whistle & the crunch of snow breaking under boots around the lips lighting the candles as night falls gather 'round the fire talk of storms 'same time of year in '75 snowed in 3 days claustrophobia drove her crazy' 'a pleasant day drifty & strange' snow & the wind pushing breathless falling forward feet first into you spend the whole day waiting for the wind to stop moving less pushed on tho you're not routines forgotten/ /schedules changed the wind drove us all day scurrying back & forth arms full of wood of food of the mind's workings & the heart's all our life the heart drives us furiously into the arms of lovers crying & desperate laughing & sane arms full of each other we contain contains us wind blew furiously lifted the snow blew in walls of white against the glass shudder in the frame & strain the body aches & is full of longing the broken limbs crashing half way over the road driving by head stuck out the window white out loss of vision of the heart's working the thingness of things in storm in heat the fire in the grate glows coals shift into ash the crumpled pages flare & are gone so slow so very very slow even tho the wind blows & the breath comes in gasps the heart races everything moves so slow impossible memory trace flicker & gone the day's slow as glass passes into the night yawning all night the generators roll taking it in shifts feeding the gas in darkness under the falling snow wind blows slower & slower all your life your heart pulls you longing takes you one state of mind to another self so many many burst thru the thots swirl towards you out of the minds of strangers yet unborn white wall of the future moving forward goodbye this world to another mid night & dream & the scene is strangely the same goodbye moves past you & is gone wind slower & slower takes you take me the hour of almost cold when the few lights flicker the candles burn low & the wind the moving air around you the selves flicker the hour of not quite there out of the nursery rhymed icker fl icker fl icker fl ight 'n the many within the one skin float tenses overlapping present & past the wind blows all around you slower & slower the selves fold back in the image shuffle the hour before you dream crying & desperate laughing & sane all your life desire fills you white of her flesh swept towards you in the night in the hour of animal heat in the sweet surrender of the flesh love takes you utterly swept forward on the flood out of into selves like a as if only itself as the wind blows as all around you frozen branches creak the snow presses thru the screens splatters against the glass drifts shaping/ /reshaping hour after hour as you watch as you turn away without you despite you unconnected to anything in the hour of absolute only itself wind & snow across the road into the trees swirling flake to flake impossible memory trace drift & are gone the night's slow as glass passes into the new day yawning powerless only the generator's roar as creak of stairs as you passes thru the many many rooms so many doors & windows to choose only itself & the wind blows slower & slower slowed down the snow falls over the frozen soon to be planted you heart ground selves wind snow Hour 8: 4:35 to 5:35 p.m. lost Hour 9: 7:35 to 8:35 a.m. 'and a river went out from Eden' into the world East the sun the mind barely awake into the rising which is the world turning day on the sea wall shadow falling west over the sand among the palm trees & the brush fish leaping up 'all the time in the world1 out there in the gulf nets spread floats bob on the flickering surface all the time in '& time out' tide feet in the shifting surf surface of the world almost the end of the second millenium since Your son's birth are we Your children? in Your image? i'm age a natural process then death no questions of a heaven or a second life 'you've got to take a...1 'chances are' the river leads on into a lake or ocean circling gulls sand pipers against the sea wall pelicans the moving air breathing in & out (meditations on the world asked Him) 'the way of...' I'm age & aging the body loses its elasticity muscles sag sages 'How much time have we got?' the wages of he rages at his own mortality she rages at her own mortality running out low tide approaching receding at the edge of 'with you in a moment' 'only got a minute' 'only take a minute' 'wasting my time' against the ear drums among the shifting pressed against 'world enough &...' 'no time like the present1 none at all as the waves fall on the beach & birds call back & forth over the sea 'as good a time as any1 out of Eden into the world Lest the awe should dwell And turn your frolic to fret You shall look on my power at the helping hour But then you shall forget!' (in this absence in this silence in the brain when no words come only the acknowlegement of presence talking tho i've no right to think You're listening 'at the helping hour' at the edge of the great salt river circles the world under the fragile blue dome of air encloses us breathing in& '...out from Eden' 'and a river went...' Hour 10: 10:35 to 11:35 a.m. bitten. horsefly buzzing 'round my ears on a rock above the raspberry canes blueberry bushes pushing thru the cracks mosquitoes wild hay & skunk cabbage "bitten by the urge' 'the writing bug' something at my right shoulder birdcalls high followed by two low & short notes outside history what freedom is tyrannies opposed bitter wars (THE OUTRAGE) whole peoples displaced (DESTROYED) finally takes its place in the natural world outside all will to power Chiang K'uei Su Tung Po perceptual sets not unlike my own words on paper as the world around ebbs & flows madness dark dreams of death & mutilation dragonflies & all around you fields stretch on the fence lines run daisies one outcrop to another wings of monarch butterflies around you the curtain of air falls more people every day dying than even your wish to can encompass old age starvation sickness war around you the bushes yield their fruit the buzz of grasshoppers or cicadas outside memory where the land exists buildings crumble steeples that were raised to heaven fall green fluttering wings of white fluttering wings of butterflies over the fields birds & beasts call trying to connect it all impossible brief perspective of the present ALL past& future FALL dead faces of tyranny of hope isms form a history of systems torn apart in the flux of time the limb snaps rotting in the long grass DI la so chromatic looking even now for the rhymes the connectives DAC some talk of woman man the land & bitten by the natural world we disappear from the decks of ships the edge of bridges canoes overturning in northern lakes gone DOWN in to the natural world beyond the city where the wild fields wait the deer & foxes roam beyond the grip of history where our bodies decay and war has not yet reached this is what the land teaches its presence bitten a desire to travel thru it some books of journeying a life accounting for my presence our presence in these times of war times of peace all times ultimately passing like this body bitten these bushes animals or TIC BRIEFLY: The Birth/Death Cycle -- Hours 11,12,13 & 14 Hour 11: 1:35 to 2:35 a.m. opening the present farther & farther that must be what's happening father noun verb other myself 'i fathered you1 never thot it would be true kept saying 'when Ellie became pregnant1 as tho it had nothing to do with me author a real issue here 'of creativity' 'have you seen the new issue?' his penis his pen is writ thru 'they gave each other a present1 i guess time gives you the past 'he's got a real past' i.e. undesirable 'that's not a real present' i.e. unsuitable so who's coming to dinner or anything who came well that's the issue new nouns for some old faces me: father Ellie: mother & then history continues little seed in time flew out of me little egg in the great brine right on time ception crete tent densed stancy con stant i.e. IN fant real 'ity1 ergo: thingness finally linking in with the great we finally take our place in the endless flow birth means rebirth means on you go on you goes not 'ennui' (a misreading) but on into we when the selves merge a new self emerges we 'three we're not alone' HOLD IT 'living in a memory' 'my how the time goes past' months of it ill watch her change 'our' baby its self something inside of me outside of me inside of her outside of her (eventually) 'my echo my shadow &me' let's go out & find a present' 'that'd make a lovely present' 'may i ask who you're giving that present to' indeed in act in perpetuity of the race never can escape the chase of time of the human fact of the act birth but firth the burst & then the first born bairn no longer barren (coz we was bare in the bedroom) Barrie's me & Ellie's we & makes three T)lue heaven1 's sake they call them Pop* songs any way you look at it 's the same forwards & backwards pop as in the motion creates the notion which arrives is 'at1 & hence 'notation' of the act or fact of the creation but can i present the past? isn't the past always present? we don't live in the present or the past but the presently (i.e. theory of life as deferred potential (to a greater or lesser degree)) Interviewer: So if sex is equated with writing... Author: Then birth would be publishing. Interviewer: Because its visible? Author: Because its a multiple. (i can't remember the moment when it happened but it must have been in Vancouver, we figured that out for sure, conceiving where i was conceived, a second addition.) Poetic justice' 'his words ring true' 'a beautiful sentence1 POPART mother art too craft so you stand around & wait now at the gateway to this world THEY CAME FROM INNER SPACE out of no where out of here into her w—e (he said ' gesturing) s born ( her or he) in the love roll calls PRESENT!!' Hour 12: (unordered/incomplete) 11:00 to 11:53 a.m. order sweet seduction of that odour shifts or is a door opens thru which the world 's glimpsed tumbling in form's a space the door defines (first) & then this thing moving we describe relative to the frame of reference up side down this side down relative to up be cause of the machinery's delicacy & balance (i'm) balance 'im or 'er when the breath hhhhhs leaves t'em (shhhhh) asleep &then awake one take a particular order i a wall of doors six walls of doors hex agon y a spell a spill as poll as pull as pall i.e. from the people from the powerbrokers from death choices the myriad voices of the worlds the selves shifting as the letters shift 'like1 the letters that's how we spell the world conceptual alphabets look maw i just made up a new word1 or-der or dir-ect orders or dor-ic columns or dur-able things or dar-ing thots T makes up 'me1 M(lkj fflhgf) E first the nation then the combination politeraturecally poethically define the frame defyin' the frame -oid or dar-ing young man on the fly-ing tra-peze fool a loof loaf better use his these definitions things/themselves the tarot has that ability to rat spills the beans on our spells unvoiced plans for the future the past order or roads stretch out from this point this centre all around us forever like a dedication for ever Hour 13: 6:35 to 7:35 a.m. briefly the heart does break the aching muscle in the chest carries more than the weight hangs from the body from the barely perceiving brain buried under the weight of loss of grief brief moment of clarity stillborn i never know him never name him bury him under the greening tree in the shadow of the old stone wall falls away from me into the earth at birth unborn again when our son died i feared Ellie'd die too a gnawing in the mind blind terror i held her all night just to keep her to me tho the heart pounds the will shatters you are broken his spirit dead our spirit in this world too quick without explanation gone drove into the countryside hours on the road to Point Pelee south to the very bottom skipped stones onto the lake flick across the surface & gone into another world like my sister Donna dead at six weeks or Ellie's brother Robert dead at two years into the slow dissolve of memory a life love's loss passes this grief f s past in time caring awake all night & past us slipped thru the gap between the living & the dead on past this passing & this griefs hold gone who was never ours to hold past us briefly a life time's alike less thru loss &yet the loss at last passes too of us no *baby makes three1 not ours alive or dead illusion of possession slips past us GOD IT ALL SLIPS PAST US so briefly Hour 14: 1:35 to 2:35 a.m. passages from death into life 'nothing but the river that flows' not so much a line as a source so that we move & pass ages in the motion foreward or sideways or lime moves thru & around us old father old greybeard you touch us all you are cliche & fate & fearful & sweet elixir mostly you are there at the end of this sentence like a period. except the period is what i just passed thru or part of a general description this writing will come to fit or except mostly i am always conscious of myself as older never younger than i am always looking backwards into the present misreading read the title as 'Hiding in the Unverse' took it as true found for myself all these clouds all this flickering air all this breathing & blood flow & sometimes speech some time's talk this hour in the universe oblivious drunken voices in the street 1:45 a.m. slam of car trunk & vanishing clatter of motor Glimpses of Vanished Originals even Eden 'How should he know that peaks and valleys can so soon change?' so lost in the one verse never made it home back across that range & into that valley dreamed so often as a child the village at the end of the wild beyond the hills & the sculpted park whose streets i wandered stores i browsed books bought awoke elated two days later searching for them on my shelf & nothing only a void touches you briefly eternal fascination 'when you're feeling blue1 from life thru life This minute sitting alone, page-boys all muted, I think of days of old: Hand in hand. Compose poems. Down twisting sidepaths towards limpid streams.1 -- Wang Wei, in a letter to Fei Ti 'down into the world of men* not so much a source but crossing over the trick is not to get your clothes wet the trick is if you get your clothes wet to make it poetry the trick is crossing over not so much as belief but as continuity you do tho greybeard kisses you & you know you're not the first he is horror & surrender & decay & translation he is angel & spectre & griever & release 'i wish i'd never met you' 'if i never meet you again it'll be too soon' 'do drop in1 'why did i bother inviting you?1 not so much a continuity but a passage from life to death or unknown to unknown parentheses life 'stuck in the middle1 'torn in two' 'or three or four or more' in some land with me & 'If you say spring wind does not understand things Why should it blow to us fallen flowers?' never make it home 'never find the way back in a million years' adrift in the void we cannot conceptualize cannot grasp rushing towards some unformulated nothingness thru the dark & the dark the endless passages Hour 15: 8:35 to 9:35 p.m. l(2(conversations in another room sound tracks 'can't leave them lying 'round' 'off the wall' shuffle over me say hello to friends CARRY ON (a conversation) so maybe this is something like starting over like similetaneity (this is just the babble before the music starts this is just the start) being & begin the chicken & the egg & the gee makes the horse giddy (waves waver all-a-quaver quivering art he start with) UP meditation (head on) definite rhythm deaf night noise (silence in the midst of these human conditions) building the composition 'i could hear you singing after all there's noone there1 HERE (guitar) 'i know it yeah underneath the particles' ART (piano) 'figuring out's flying on the fingers take you' (bass) IN 'the yeah that talk not to take time tightly' (drums) NO JUST FRIENDS!! all around me so that i wanted to say Ym trying to write1 1/2/3/4 i'm tying the right words together counter-rhythms a weight a history is figures an improvisation saints & angels giants, gods & going for the moment gone an improve situation you 'go for broke' 'flat out' away like a horse called SHIP OF STATE the trick's to finish in the money honey do you like a muddy track? all that indefinite future wavering between you & the finish line a fine line that line of the poem you just wrote torn by conflicting emotions 'you don't love me like i love you' of course not ill logic 'nobody could' the difference between two heads starts with a single thot certain stupid arguments Ellie & me fighting over whether the room was too hot forgetting metabolic differences all these conversations in the same room the head buzzes you almost answer could shout yourself hoarse in this notion of noise a night out of sync of rhythm of the life of friends & social graces moments with the muse's heirs not solo tho the solo's taken in the end where does the poem live but in this din in the midst of this accompaniment so much a part of the intent its written out of audio densities i return it to)3)4 Hour 16: 3:35 to 4:35 p.m. What did i see in the night? What vision? What images of war & death? That there are millions who die violently that we are used to it at a distance numbed not quite indifferent we add our voices to the chorus muted unable to believe the tales of torture & brutaliy speak nonetheless out of puzzlement perceived horror these endless chronicles of genocide what seems often the suicidal impulse to protest from moral outrage from grief from the felt inequity & inhumanity of which the sum's a helpless feeling in the chest beats at you claws at the eyes the tongue all yearning to turn inward & be mute blind some kind of vision of gentleness a strange peace in which the beast in us is stilled the greed, the bloodlust & the envy willed to sleep but it exists. What did i see in the night? Was it more than this? That we are lulled not by what is best in us but by the petty differences hurt by slights a tone of voice the noise of our simple jealousies blocks out the screaming of the world blurs the overwhelming helplessness We keep the stage small on which we strut & claim as epic the very ordinariness of our experience shield within our lives the same murderous emotions we deplore there is nowhere we turn that is not so. Even poetry has its posturing superiority. What did I see in the night? My own face in the mirror my eyes behind which terror of such violence hides so that I turn away too often overwhelmed from the news 6000 disappeared in Argentina the systematic killings in Cambodia these ills & worse of the world what am i to do with the ineffectiveness of the poem that it reaches only the converted only those to whom such messages get thru that it is not a gun nor a means to peace but only that least of things words but that they mean so much to me & that i see the world most clearly thru them. What did i see in the mirror but something human ruled by its own fears & dreams that clings to its mate in the darkness weeping frightened of death & its own mortality the uncertainty of its future. What did i see in the night but this the great void of human history a vision of the false mystery our lives assume because we crowd these rooms with insignificances beyond which i heard a screaming & a singing & there is such desperation in me to hear it so clearly i will never forget it that noise/ /that tune Hour 17: 5:35 to 6:35 p.m. two freighters gliding in the distance as if they would finally meet & touch somewhere south of here in the grey blue haze of Lake Erie the different planes & surfaces become unclear collision course feet in the crashing waves at Pelee's tip sun in a haze above me hugeness of the sky surrounds this i the mind beats against the skin contains this brain & only that shell of flesh & bone remains maintains this sundering empty it out empty it out only the wind moving in the tear ducts blowing into my open mouth my throat carries this noise & force within it is consumed blood thrives on it all thot this animal flesh contains thrives on it gulls in clouds above & around Pelee Island's outline over the waves so little to say when the birds scream & the wind the world is in voice around me all of this the personal references the names nothing more than shrill chatter noise reaching some day a final destination unintelligible vocabulary history earlier today Ellie & i at Southwold earthworks pacing the perimeter (Arthur's Table? Mayborough?) no trace of a maker remains these monuments we raise, books we write, wind up in a lost tongue finally all reference vanishes tho reason points out the folly a voice is born again tho the different purposes & meanings remain unclear this voice is born again empty it out empty it out i have this dumb shout within me a lifetime cannot approximate i have this wish to write the world i can never realize stand here mouth open air fills me blown away in the day to day hugeness of this hazy being i can never take it all in i have this sentence i must finish i have this poem i must write the boats steam away west towards Lake Huron east to Lake Ontario the planes & surfaces foreshorten & change bird song & wave noise wind & whistling air in the midst of there is something a presence or a silence an absence or the pressure of (leaving Southwold drove west paused near Morpeth where Lampman's buried read his lines inscribed in the graveyard: 'Yet, patience ~ there shall come Many great voices from life's outer sea, Hours of strange triumph, and when few men heed, Murmurs and glimpses of eternity.') THERE Hour 18: 12:35 to 1:35 a.m. three months of lines recurring in the mind driving south from North Bay 1 a.m. August 10th 1981 full moon scudding from behind dark clouds thot 'this is where the poem begins1 or later Ellie in labour (September 16th) the notion of poetry works at the back of the brain no matter the hour of the day or night no matter the hour come to in a life finally the stuff of which the poem is made our infant daughter Sarah in my arms 'is this where the poem begins? double reverses sey yes i sey yes 12:45 a.m. an evening spent with friends bissett, Arlene Lampert, Janine & Robert Zend - that list enters the writing again like a leaf picked up on the shoe & tracked in the details of my life dragged into the poem in part at least immaterial as the leaf as any life as the fleeting impressions of this cold October night car slam background hum of furnace & fridge on the edge of being on edge Sarah's born ten weeks before her time searching for a line of entry 'i didn't have the time' 'not enough hours in the day' 'where has the time gone to1 drive around three months waiting for myself to makes the move too full of feeling to articulate it driving south on Hwy 11 the moon filled the windshield of the car & the stars, when the clouds cleared, i almost lost my way driving into them like later panicked driving south into Toronto late call to say 'your baby's being born1 useless with too fast emotion what was to stop me from driving into the lake except that edge of consciousness we cling to like a road, a breakwater, or the memory of a mapped route home the moon fills my mind dropped into the poem kicking & screaming weeks in the premature nurseries Ellie watching baby after baby, newborn, rushed into incubators, under sunlamps, heels pricked for blood, lungs suctioned of fluid, faces turning blue from cyanosis, bradycardia, apnea, a life, some lives, begin driving south too tired to drive anymore sleep four hours then hit the road again smashed down onto that line of thot a limitation we bump up against the world the day to day waver of a continent smashed into by waves & eaten away eatin' away telling our daughter all she has to tfo is gain a little weight (every day) Ellie pumping her breasts for milk the moon fragments broken by invisible clouds press round it like similes & metaphors the moon evokes writing south too tired to write anymore October 30th 1981 sleep four hours drive out to Simcoe read again poems like this one leaves from a book tracked into your life Sarah clinging to me 'is this where the poem begins?' sey yes i sey yes i sey yes i sey yes Hour 19: 9:35 to 10:35 p.m. (forEllie) heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat of the heart dear hart hairto day & cor tomorrow of intellect (memory) ( ) heart of grace hart of grease herteofgresse stout heart 'as one doth that taketh a sodyne courage1 cordage women 'Heart of oaks are our ships, heart of oak are our men1 of affection of heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat recordrecorder heartbeat heartbeat heart or heartbeat heartbeat mind heartbeat heartbeat 'That dwelled in his herte heartbeat sike and sore, heartbeat Gan faillen when the hertfc heartbeat felte deth;' heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heart-burning heartbeat heart-blood heartbeat heart-breaking heartbeat heart-ache heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat 'all that human hearts endure' heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heart-less heartbeat heart-ease heartbeat heart-felt heartbeat heart-whole heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heart-sick heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat 'a change of heart' ('in the heart or in the head?') heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat 'hearts are in the right place' heartbeat whence hearty, heartily, heartbeat hearten heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat 'you gotta have...1 it ' Vpon the knees of our hearts to agonize our most constant faith' whence 'miles & miles & miles of heart' 'Behould the ears of my hart, are set before thee,' 'My wife & I fell out a little... she cried, poor heart! which I was troubled for' 'all you really need is...1 heart of my heart divided heart heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heart of darkness hear a hearb hearc heard heare hearf hearg or: to be at the heart of things hearh heari hear j heark hearl hearm hearn hearo hearp to have a heart to heart hearq hearr hears heart hearu hearv hearw hearx heary hearz heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat 'Once upon a time My heart was just an organ,1 - Rodgers & Hart in the heart of the thicket in the heart of the fire in the heart of the city in the heart of the night (in the heat of the moment i gave you my heart) 'Now we're getting to the heart of it!' sweetheart THE GRAMMAR TRILOGY - Hours 20,21 & 22 Hour 20: 12:35 to 1:35 a.m. bio geo graphy writing a self a country landscape a can be in clOud cl ud (or, as in that poem i never published (not knowing the etymology): CLOUD O O O STONE too much the clod to see it then (ear to the earth)) grammar, grandma, now in your 97th year you've outlived most of them — a husband - two daughters - a son - only my mother & your other son left the rest of us grandchildren, great & great great grandchildren, you feel further & further away from we become less real the longer your life becomes family bio geo logos tonight misreading my notes mistake the time miswrite this hour lo gos cal miss writing? con fusion nection I { con { O { graphy IO (inventor of the 5 vowels) sister of Phoroneus (variously Bran, Barn, Brennus, etc. reincarnated as a crow) (all this out of the con graphy (the fusion which is the nection) the bio geo^ we of grandma, ma, me & Sarah beING INGwe (founder of the English tribes inventor of the runic alphabet) the continuous presence the contiguous present ethereal earth eel out of rhythm pattern CON fusion v(again) 6 nection ' AM BIG! u ity? i-i-i-i o my sombre era o (line thru history) bi • etym gene martyr ge • OLOGY or all a G (which is my birth'd A September 30th being G's beginning llth month in the Bethluisnion grammar :the relations of words in a sentence she is my grammar her name is Agnes sent m's sent n's mart yr all a G what i thot was endin/g beginin/g writin/g ing we Hour 21: 11:25 p.m. to 12:40 a.m. 8:45 p.m. Bob phoned to say 'grandma's dead' 'that minute seemed like an hour* subjective subject i've covered the ground before ground grandma you were the gave in my give a love of women flows from what you taught me of them of you of the two of us & how we met you taught me games made up rules changed them to your purposes grandma Nichol the year she died talked constantly of heaven sang hymns some afterlife a vision you never mentioned heaven once just earth & Walter Workman whom you'd married & Plunkett, Saskatchewan, children you birthed encouraged to write your story that story's over which is why this poem begins who i rr semble The horses were out in the fields you see, the river ran all through that patch, & this horse, that was old M» se, she was reaching up for some leaves on the tree that was standing on the bank & it broke, & this great big turtle, there must have been a turtle right there, slid out from under...' turtle (that link with age) muse (a horse here (in disguise)) i heard such tales from you myths you were my dumb gazing at night skies world before my birth read for signs inhabited the wild west my father dreams of it was all local reference your life Walter dying you were 57 worked then as a housekeeper til age 72 work was the thing made sense to you "When I was 10 or 11 a neighbour lady wanted me to come & look after her 3 children while she did some housecleaning. Well this place was only a mile and a half from home. I could look over & see the rest of the kids playing around the yard, which made me homesick. I stayed 3 days & then went home. She gave me 3 yds of calico which was then about 8 cents a yard. It was red with a very small white dot. I thot a lot of that dress. I guess because I had made it myself.' 'Memories of Agnes Leigh Workman, born October 8th, 1885, the story of my life, as I can remember, I'm becoming quite forgetful. This is supposed to be as far back as I can remember. I think I was 4 years old at the time. This is in South Dakota & we'd been living on a 40 acre farm. That was what a man was allowed to take as a homestead, & my dad wanted to get to where he could have more land to farm so we were moving to this other place that had some cattle & dad was driving a wagon that was loaded with our household goods, which I don't think was very much, & my mother was driving this old horse named Tom hitched to this buggy, 3 or 4 of us kids were in the buggy, & Dell fell out. She was about 2 years old. She fell between the front wheel & the side of the buggy. The old horse stopped dead still & didn't move until Ma got back in the buggy with Dell. She wasn't hurt.' miracles or so they seemed miraculous world of memory dusty hotels & vanished dirt streets Plunkett as a name in Heaven you are gone now into the QT remembrance's revision this side the flesh weeping because we miss you only the mind retains again memory fragments flickers & Then I remember another time, I guess that same fall when I was 4, they had the cows in the corral at the back of the barn where my mother & dad were milking. I took my tin cup & went out wherd'they were to get the cup filled & one of the cows picked me up between her horns & was carrying me around.1 & birth death Agnes wife lover mother grandmother recalling the fall Warren Tallman & i visited you you put on the trick nose the trick feet stood there leaning on your cane laughing you knew the ridiculousness of it all falls away & i miss you love you your quick twist of wit twists inside me life loved you love you this Hour 22: 12:35 to 1:35 p.m. death you enter the poem as you always do ~ disruptor whatever the order or structure we must reckon you in a sum cuts across some vision of perfection we cling to corruptor of our flesh decay ec(ho) in our day leading this art's d(ec(co) )ay? oration contains its fallibility humanity's struck sure brief span of which we write & writ your dark unknowing surrounds it decORATION ARTifice (it melts in the heat of the emotions) this punning un's me o pun's a door in the floor i fall thru surface after surface de)a(th de)c(ay de)p(th i am shopping between th a & p slips ship me sea to middle c a full chord or dischord music or say sea bond a band on ship in St Rument's litany you are the siren on the rock c's road calling gazing out the window on a 26th floor this fear of falling's tempt alien or c creates an action a life wavers death you are the embodiment of contradiction the fixer finalizer gives us illusions of control because of the limits you impose hours shift illusionary 'our' 'at a time like this1 's all time mate (what the d ate was ours) 'im's mortal 'er's mortal hopin's adored in the floor i fall thru nothing to cling to but the puncertainty you unme death into the punbelieveable void where nothing i have clung to clings i sing anyway of mortality of the death of family pun a ctual she slipped away in her sleep1 'she's gone1 old English verb from which 'dead1 came thru which 'death' entered the language lost we are slipping after you verb 'part of speech which signifies to be, to do or to suffer' we are chasing you into the mystery of after lost verb lost life our are hour makes the phase phrase sparse shares the origin of speech we are sprinkled or scattered mere babellers sum for mer random/accident/collison/mutation the births the deaths poetry Hour 23: 6:35 to 7:35 p.m. (in memory of Visvaldis Upenieks) Jim Brown chemical change If I beat it, am I making music? th' Passion Lilies cry out to him 'HURRY HURRY < listen i shudda got rid ofyu a long time ago R. Murray Schafer Joe Rosenblatt bill bissett ) LISTEN GEORGE IT'S JAZZ AND POETRY TOO IT'S A NO-MIND Lionel Keams instantaneous being with it through go you step out on the ice a hulking mass of reflex energy scan o'huigin all his settings ready for the letting loose of batterings of sound across the bridge to man. the trouble was i realized just before i started howling somebody had been watching all along not knoing not knoing what what had been had been written and sed resound or that the time pass the sound gone grounded the speech the body of grammar gone beyond the reach of real hearing only the reel left unwinding Earle Bimey David UU Silent is my chapel; silent is my holy place; Over my house, my gate, and my fields silence is poured out. Lamentation for Ishtar inspiration as it leaves the body incidental death is and makes of any work a book of the dead structures we establish arbitrary who have listened much yet not recognized; and who, though recognizing, are, nevertheless weak in familiarity. The Tibetan Book of the Dead in the space of a month a heartbeat friends fall out of your life your heart of suffering / have to expect, 0 my lady, judgement of confusion & violence. Death & trouble are bringing me to an end ~ ing reel- lives we had built together fade, will fade, change, die visions, reel, i zations of the voice trapped in the magnetic pull of no ation tation, these forms arguments for the voice that frail choice Lamentation for Ishtar gone soon into great noise silence marks an end to our speech choices each of us made to be heard caught then in the endless re-vision of the oral thfull breath is what knowledge is, is human, is wholly real, includes what is in all things Rhythm says: 7 am here and I want to go there; all that debris arms & legs & hair bruised purple blossom along white flushing skin (there's no rection any more.) endless poem bill bissett R. Murray S chafer Jim Brown scan o'huigin Lionel Kearns draw th' tongue in draw th' tongue out Joe Rosenblatt walk alone in the wind and the dusk toward the beautiful antediluvian sky Earle Birney a breath taken . your name in our words. a desire for presence David UU the sound of you Mother/Father echoes flickering a world Hour 24: 11:35 a.m. to 12:35 p.m. 'I awoke as if from sleep, a new light broke on me1 musics or that there are songs in the head spheres in which the brain moves harmonies dischords atum fixed instance of the flux or the brain blanking, eyes lidding closing down into a netherworld where gods walk saints talk to us, Jove the alchemical tin 'Joseph he was an tin man1 oversaw the alchemical change of Christ translation into the afterlife a world as heaven was the heavens, Kepler saw a sphere where sun was God Jesus the fixed stars Holy Ghost between we aim now for galactic centre or beyond that another round which galaxies spin spun out on the rim of the Milky Way further & further from where we are is where knowledge leads us the rain forests of Venus man-made canals of Mars gone now these celestial mechanics tinker with our knowledge of our self sure centre of a universe made smaller, less significant daily, all knowledge finally a lesson in humility synchronicity metaphor discarded models of the universe the mind atomic world of tiny solar systems electron/earth nucleus/sun i lived on one once somewhere in a nanomoment in the mind saw the face of God neutrons & protons in constant conflict split "brighter than a thousand suns' & then the horror of it over & over knowledge strips the self away, the flesh shifting faces of a world we cannot pretend to grasp Babel takes new forms & figures we point our towers heavenward relocate belief blow God's old homes apart our lives split families reinvoke the old forms desperately but nothing holds it is all vanity arrogance we are lead further out or further in mercurial hunger the only constant in this brief history of our kind our songs fleeting, temporal, against these larger musics we glimpse notation of but never hear Hour 25: 2:35 to 3:35 a.m. 'somewhere there's music' how faint, the tune falls over & over the ear drums echo stirrup, chirrup (a cricket somewhere in the room there's music or) there pressure of air on the still moving face shift in the drift that age presses on the body vocalabulary the way that word 'drift' keeps drifting in from what origin? continental or wood or snow or 'i get your drift' right in the face the poem snowballs voKABALLAry 'Dr. if this is the cure what's the sickness?' dis-ease (a state that thinking is) 'don't think such bad thots' 'it's not such a bad idea' 'he's so lost in thot he can't hear us' adrift or one drift or 'wonder if they really get my drift' could, be 'all the conditional conditions that may, be1 MURPHY'S LAW (circa 1983), & hence 'somewhere there's heaven' even 'tell me your idea1 'show me your I.D.' or like my sister Dea said , age three, 'IDea' & pointed to herself (Heisenberg's principle of one certainty falls over & over on the ear drummmmmmmmm a-tom-tom-tom-tom-tom-ic age & now the atom is pass6 (discarded model, like a Model A) 'atomic age' evokes the 1950's we're Model A/Ts now all hydrogen & heavy water & Tm gonna take you on a sea cruise' miss-a-lot if you don't watch out the window narrows 'how high the moon') pressure of air on a still moving face age presses on the body 'im presses presses it out Hour 26: 5:35 to 6:35 a.m. (for Ellie -- a valentine) E akahele i ka mamo a I, o kolo mai ka mole uaua. Beware the descendants of I, lest the tough roots crawl forth. Hawaiian Proverb translated by Mary Kawena Pukui nothing to consider but love the heart how words & the blood flow stirred by the thot of her the flesh of her her in the shadowed dark leeward of the Koolau Range stars invisible above the clouds spread out over these mountains this valley in the heat of the pre-dawn the mind is not is blank except for the automatic gesture of of longing runs on beyond the necessary body of desire like the whirring fan in this tiny room stirs the thot the fabric of the curtain so little to say when it is the body desired the words not part of that urge speech denoting separation T has to talk to 'you1 because the one wants the two gether in the hush of love with only the flesh between the pure murmur that is meaning merges the tongue silenced in the shadowed valleys among the limbs the branchings of longing eased erased all trace of language gone speech of us we carry that 'each* there on the tongue in the concept 'reach-out-to-you' across these distances flesh creates the cells are just that until we touch so little between us &yet so much Honolulu February 14th 1984 MIDDLE INITIAL SEQUEL Hour 27: 3:35 to 4:35 a.m. Hallowed evening's eve dying day's light's beginning first hours of dawn the spirit sways back & forth within this frail shell shuck the p i am again bn middle initial i am born into 'm no p but initially b chance letter of creation the arbitrariness of sighin's names all hallowed eve she took the ribbing a damned evening of spooks ghosts muse-eum source-ery witch'll it be p n o playing middle c initial keys a scale of values al vues of the arbored rare eve ness of signs wit, Tiw, in the still dark hour of your name day i name too one of the old gods the ceremony lost reference to see how the banned play on luster of notes c hords tiwns melodeus we never lose the thread of walking the dark streets in the hours before dawn spikes of frost clustering 'round the street lamps the threat of snow the given descends all around us & the ungiven the seen act one two three intials here please because i have made a change desire you witness it hear please the changes the fingers play the fingers the changes play changes the fingers play the fingers the changes play the play changes the fingers the changes play the fingers the fingers play the changes the play fingers the changes the first middle last initial crone logical eve witch dei ends begins day Tuesday, October 30th, 1984 in place of Hour 28 1:30 a.m. to 1:59 a.m. words, finally, for anyone who wants them in the midst of the great silence which surrounds in the midst of this instance of the noise because there is not order in the world because there is more madness than any one of us can deal with more tragedy the deaths, daily, nothing new in news only the endless cycle bright blade of history cutting into itself because there are words & more words uncounted books deploring our inhumanity prizes for those who merely spoke from conscience a competition & a judging because there is now the tyranny of quantity the sheer mass of literature that concept becoming clear the old notion of immortality seen for what it is a preening in the bleak light history reflects - READ ME - READ ME -the weight of words shifts (in the library stacks the shelves grow fuller, the buildings forced to expand, the budgets cut, nonexistant, of course the voices become more muted, even tho they are screaming, even tho they have things to say, things that you might want to hear, the words disappear into the dust, the darkness, the books closed and noone here to read them, noone here to take them from the shelves, anything any one of us might say becoming simply what it is, ink on yellowing pages, disappearing into this wait of words, the unvoiced endless hours) This page intentionally left blank Book III CONTINENTAL TRANCE This page intentionally left blank We cannot retrace our steps, going forward may be the same as going backwards. We cannot retrace our steps, retrace our steps. All my long life, all my life, we do not retrace our steps, all my long life, but.1 Gertrude Stein The Mother Of Us All This page intentionally left blank minus the ALL ABOARD minus my father waving minus the CN logo minus my mother waving minus seventeen years of my life Ellie & me our unborn child in her belly heading east out of Vancouver July 27th 8p.m. nineteen eighty1. what i wanted to write: 'this is how it begins1 or 'pulling into New Westminster' what actually happened: took a different route skipped the canneries of New Westminster entirely (so much for nostalgia or plotting the poem in advance) walking up to the snack bar seven cars to the front the sleeping car porter three cars ahead making the beds the teenage kid said to him (admiringly) 'you've got it all worked out eh' as he flipped the mattress down upper to lower berth & the porter said 'if i had it all worked out i wouldn't be doing this' crossing the Fraser River Port Mann in the night lights out the left window of the train darker outline of the mountains dark blue of the sky minus the stars out this left window on the universe the old guy who spoke to the porter just now said: 'my wife wanted to take this trip before she takes her heavenly trip' my grandma, 96, earlier today said: 'i don't think i wanta stay around too many more1 Ellie's sitting across from me reading Peter Dickinson's One Foot In The Grave & in the first draft of this poem i wrote: 'minus these coincidences what is the world trying to tell me?' minus - the word returns - some notion of absence (not a life) subtracting the miles travelled east (minus mine ~ us) loosing all notion of possession aboard this mixed metaphor upper berth swaying in the darkness click as the wheels clack off the miles two women pass thru drunk from the observation car the one talking at the top of her voice i say 'shut up1 loudly the woman shuts up & her friend lowering her voice whispers back Tuck off lullabies in the real world insistent instances Kamloops in the early morning someone, going crazy in their roomette, rings the porter's bell repeatedly seven a.m. no way to sleep again stagger forward to breakfast the eggs taste of plastic or pam drink tea lurch up to the observation car watch the mountains loom by back in the sleeper car one porter scratches the other porter's knees 'stop it! you know what that does to me!' Blue River at ten my cousin Donna's nursing station visible thru the trees you too, Nicky, none of us escapes these details presences even in these wilds rocking back & forth eastward on this western train beginnings & endings discrete frames in a continuous flow the Japanese family talking words i don't know a horse glimpsed from the window a man at the river's side things i have knowledge of but cannot account for like the flowers i saw earlier today purple spikes driven up interspersed among the charred stumps of the fired forest or the mountain's high green meadow visible above the clouds or the brook the train crossed even as i wrote these words rushing down carrying its content into the larger lakes & rivers of the world 'because i was raised on trains' ~ this is the line that kept recurring to me all night "because i criss-crossed the west with my mother & father1 - the only other line i could find to write remembering as the woman across from us slaps her son's fingers spilling the peanuts my father bought all down the aisle of the train, 1954, or dad yelling at me, 1948, because i was running back & forth to the water cooler, the newsy's face that same trip, pissed off at his job, twisted in a grimace i was intended to read as genial random information intrudes each time i ride these rails maybe for the last time headline in that Vancouver paper GOVERNMENT AXES TRANS-CONTINENTAL LINE THRU JASPER part of my memory disappears 1500 jobs & a slice of history "because i criss-crossed the west with my mother & father' "because i was raised on trains' the conductor takes our luncheon reservations '1:15' but atfiveto 1 says 'its five to 2 set your watch ahead' nothing's fixed aboard this paradox affects more than we believe flux logic we eat at 2:15 ten minutes outside of Jasper the line between sadism & masochism is drawn as his one year old son hits his other son with a wire brush the father across from us says to him: 'hit yourself with it!1 masochism wins the kid starts hitting himself at least once for every time he hits his brother WHACK WHACK following this tack hitting the track to town 'too much like a rock song' - what i thot as i ended the previous poem how come that voice keeps butting in? why the need to resolve parameters? why not the rush of the asymetrical arhythmic world? why not the y not the z in the unwritten alphabets ahead? okay we'll start there with st utter's subtler statement when the riddle's rid of rid die remains ashine with its own kind of mystery half words half visions the train pulls out of Jasper three hours late is this the st ate of my mind or does that saint exist beyond these twisting tracks this train of thot? so there it is the literal metaphor or symbol linear narrative of random sequential thots accidents of geography, history & circumstance the given i don't like the 'symbol' except as accent to the basic drum of consciousness i don't like the 'like1 except as entrance to a "pataphysical reality i like the play of words of life the moment when the feelings focus absolutely a description which is what st ate meant? my st ate meant this yes whistle pulling over the level crossings in the gathering dark into Edmonton drainage ditches gleaming in the last light clusters of buildings & trees as night falls the sky reverses dark clouds against a lighter blue & the mind reverses sleep takes loosing the dream you two hours from Saskatoon fingernail of moon in the eastern sky the pastel gray clouds at dawn blow over the pinkening horizon train gathering speed all the while the berth shakes back & forth & forth over the prairie the revelation is in the blue dome of air beneath which this train & the dawn appear blue as the robin's egg i found age two shattered on the sidewalk bits of curved blue flung all about & the train of thot it lead to blue as that imagined sky that day when the clouds were white & the prairies lay over the mountains in my future mist of rain across the far horizon heading out of Saskatoon 6:35 a.m. July 31st the sky is a constant gray & the fields of wheat, alfalfa, clover, grass, etc. stretch away for miles in all directions encompassed we make our way thru the middle of Canada east towards Winnipeg the mid-summer morning rain these middle days later a cultivator then an elevator somewhere between Nokomis & Raymore (Semans to be exact) two perfect stone circles in a playground beside the tracks except the circles are made of old tractor tires (i can see this as we draw closer) like that day looking for the stones of Shap saw a perfect circle beyond the crest of the next hill lost sight of as we raced down into the valley, thrilled, up & over, it was gone, only a raggedy row of sheep in that field beyond this is how the world is rimes that disappear as you draw closer to their sense dense clumps of trees scattered across the open fields notation in the landscape of a nation & a revelation vanishing down into the valley tracking a forgotten river bottom thru the farms, the ordered fences, this old order is all around us as we cross the border into Manitoba saints you are gone part of an older order of this poem as Brun, too, is gone, sleeps with the other giants of his race presences you can trace in Lampman, Roberts, et al nineteenth century notions of this place my unborn child will never cover these miles we cover in this way of life vanishing nothing visible no a vast shining the field of sunflowers stretches to the horizon under this July sun the clouds are isolate mirror the disparate clumps of trees & the fields & sky weave thru & around them rime in the clear blue sloughs & streams we move as in a dream the mothers down the aisle screaming at their children the guy across from me whistling the Colonel Bogey March it will make sense yet this blue & green these fragmentary lives & conversations & the white world, saints' home, in between two hour delay in the Winnipeg station 'they're looking for an engine for the train1 the things that get displaced are major they leave you stranded tho you know your destination 'i'm getting out of here1 sometimes there's no getting aboard away even if your ticket's punched okay saints i hear you babbling press your way with your complaints into this scenery someone spoke of you as tho you were a literary device more a vice i keep returning to tho the order here's another one your faces rise above these tree lines there's a conversation we all come back to so many years spent talking with you a willed hallucination more than continental a kind of lifelong trance & these pauses on these sidings waiting for that load of freight to pass beside the track drowned trees water lilies fish break the surface of the lake as i look back 'where is this poem going?' Toronto' 'what does it teach us?' 'how coincidence reaches into our lives & instructs us' the 19th century knew any narrative, like life, is where coincidence leads you given, of course, the conscious choice of voice the train of thot you choose this next bit doesn't quite cohere already past tense or converted to a noun when its the bite of consciousness eludes you the flickering light thru the trees sets up an echo in my brain petit mal makes me want to puke but the trees so clustered a bird could walk the branches a thousand miles or more it is a map of consciousness what the light yields disgorges perceived thru a pattern of branches the birds fly free of in Hornpaye the sign on the building i could see from the road read 'OTHING' i reconstructed as NOTHING1 because it looked like it was falling down as Ellie & i drew closer i read, suddenly, as 'CLOTHING1 windows boarded up & broken like my life-long wish that i might clothe myself finally in belief & realize: the name of death is 'NOTHING* the name of after-death is NOTHING' accept Lord Mother/Father the briefness of this life you've granted this bliss blueberry bushes, fruit shrunken, dried, hot July day, outside this window moving that leaning tree is static as we move away vanish in its distance won't be here the day it falls or the bushes return again to bloom sitting in a room on wheels takes us Pacific Ocean to the Great Lakes middle passage the explorers dreamed of died for past the scattered daisies in the green ditches, the drowning forests, bursting water-lilies, sun-lit glades mile what? a lack of notation reaching for conclusions tho none are there you get the green forest red dying leaves off-white of the drowned birches leaves you wondering what it is ends or is it only an endless renewal God my life ends years before this poem possibly can as night falls it all falls the sky gradually caves in becomes the same still darkness as the trees well past dusk the husk of night's broken only by the train's light stars & moon out of sight behind the clouds' wall contains us in this cave in whose mouth lie rumours of our shadows other worlds round other suns dim flicker of light visible suddenly across the lake before the train takes us round the bend into the illusory dark is this the poem i wanted to write? it never is its a thing of words construct of a conscious mind governed by the inevitable end-rime time that's the tone buried in the poem a consciousness of its own mortality or mine a finality Homer soon there's noone knows whether your poem's your own or if the name denoted a community of speakers history of a race (Ellie's an obvious we draws our child's breath & her own) i's a lie dispenses illusions of plot biography when geography's the clue locale & history of the clear you who to, Nicky? only the future invisible as my own our first child died this second waits its birth all part of history all what we call a life echoes & screams thru these tunnels of trees running on tracks we no longer perceive Ellie asleep in the lower berth voices & footsteps move all night along the moving corridors of the train mist again at dawn heading into Toronto 'end' translates 'home1 7a.m. August 2nd 1981 St Clair to Union Station thru the junkyards, the backyard gardens, decaying brick factories scrawled across the one wall I WANTED TO BE AN ANARCHIST an ending in itself unending Vancouver to Toronto July 27th to August 2nd 1981 This page intentionally left blank Book IV INCHOATE ROAD This page intentionally left blank I 1 in Choate Road a car stalled underneath the bridge i pass over another fragment water spill the frozen spume of the river runs thru Port Hope into winter storm across the lake's imperfect ice blue gaps in the clouds & snow older worlder order o der wrld er wrl o inchoate world 2 life like lake like line lingers a dream of ocean and pacific one i was born by bounded in that first family superior as the other shore crossing the land bridge between ocean-going vessels steaming into both ports i was there sea to sea all i needed was to let the water take me home 3 i was taught it as their history but it made sense: 1 if by land (you can make it on foot) 2 if by sea (ineed a boat to cany me OUT THERE 4 water music two rivers winding thru Winnipeg ocean & lake what our music our poems come down to the sea in 'everything gives way & nothing stays fixed' 'the river shines between the villages' two translations see how they wind this way & that this name or another tracking me 5 Tor other waters are continually flowing on1 & other songs emptying out spring into stream into river into lake into ocean f n ocean 'n ocean ! n ocean 'n ocean 'n ocean f n ocean 6 in Choate Road the cars go by exhaust blue late January frost i thot the water spill a broken mill going too fast & couldn't quite connect it the image & beyond that the town & beyond that the lake & beyond that 1 this is the world not these words not this poem this is the world II 1 snow out the window's light glimmer's outline ships, a bay (anchored) across this page a light moves in the water's now wet blackness of the street empty stretches snowy beach reach as far as i can see into the darkness around this bay window'd prairie sky empty hole dug makes a pond the city will not let them put water in & then the tree 'n trees mark the twisting course of these lines stretch across a country a life snow falls birds & i grow older with every word every liquid gesture flows from this blue pen watermarks mark time my life by the side of this bodies these 2 beginning with lead & wood mark the course of this writing's later ink as the words begin to flow late rink lights coming on shouts of the kids on the frozen water & later th'aw flooding spring hot stretches of summer falls ice/water ice/water ice 3 pigeons on the track, a rack ing cough ing breath's frozen face mouth of the assiniboine/red (river)(brick)(engine of the train) under the bridge the birds nest along the top ledge of abandoned factory across the river to St Boni face to face with memory at the mere's edge more'n merely water goes one into the other (seen from the plane) those alphabets these rivers strokes of pens together in the plain words dried ink dyes strained thru books the stain of thinking the rivers the type we were down at the mouth where the two come together watching our breath lines of trees track across the river tracks we was thinking of writing vast expanse of white twisting no 4 not so much that but this not so much then but now not so much beginnings but beginning again's a gain a river arrive air ver-y cold & the drift under the stillness the silent stretches a current accrues air collide us not so much the river but the riven moment (more meant to you than then this 5 out window the light damned width of the river's length twists thru the mountains clouds just below the tops twist too the two wind thru & the river's ever varied very song the birds & the snow & the very hush of the damned world goes dawn & on ocean river lake stream i was in river i was lost in lake i was caught in the twist & toss in the water (essential's pull these pools perception falls all's a damn now a pulsated full) o 'ntary o 'n hurry o ' linger (so that these rhythms are established closure (details ~ what we call a theme) globular, returning, the circumnavigation of the work/world o) 'cean 'n stay o 'ngo o-ke-an-o winds thru the poem the words say slower & slower the eaupen measure of (i stood at the edge of o & e a u (au - 'to') the translation where e goes in these 1'eau countries 6 in the snow world slowed wheels rumble the heaped flow of the crystals grow around us white's white shift slips thru the hung trees line the slopes of these mountain valleys & we drift on as the snow mounts higher climbing towards an imagined top or ridge entrances the cloud world hid to the fall now thru snow, white clouds the world be/Teau 7 o eau (eaucean) 0 world (lake river, path the vowels take to the sea) eauio 1 'nvoke you sometimes why? o beginning gaining vision of the water births you int1 o wave of speech sound sine g s-ing ing mouther sonne farther INK o it \whirll 8 giggle mesh looking for the place the puns flesh out the body of speech is re vealed, the veil drops away the dance! sheer ecstasy of glimmering part icles part airy nothingnessence flow of grammar hammers in my chest, the breath's pressed OUT quick liquid spout of the wail: THOT a kind of harbour or land and m and no places the eyes rest flat/calm/march/day -- still snow still (did i expect it to blow away?) pair of dice -adox pay the price & get your change 'do you have exact change?1 i can only approximate vapour how the words (the selves) twist every chance you take water watair (dew dawn deer on the lawn below me river rushes & clouds & (water rodes the passes: the rocks & twists of river bubbling up from earth falling emptying out (somewhere) beyond int1 o water ai'r Ill river riven wandering the length up & down when was it i quoted myself into the world 1 word'l get you world flood of feeling when the river overflows its banks mudder no fodder now floating away in a boat from the house Winnipeg 1950 that fall we nailed a donkey to the wall just below the window on the second floor to mark how high the water'd risen flood was the word i learned & rain & river, water drove me out of my world mother/father into another 2 echeau vo-cab-u-lar-y diction airy or at best suspect flood mud (wreck row) two rivers known two more as the summer comes & goes Red Assiniboine Saskatchewan Bow wryme old wyrm ouroboros i-row-ny (set out in a pun t1 cross this sudden sea) 3 the trick is to know the depth always & that the surface'll get you there the flood'll bring the bottom to the top spins & the spinner marks the spot the line drops down the hook's only visible when you get more than your feet wet 4 rhywry thm theme two inseparable tune leer ich (sneer T) trance forms within you (around you) dusk rain on the harbourfront from the caf£ chair gulls gulled i am engulfed, flooded with meme mer, fe says, or the same more 'e experienced before feelings flow like a river the river flowed like a river at flood tide watch the lake rise rainy august night or maybe ordinary like a jewel eye glittering in a real face sudden surprise of the place the distraction of resemblances - in land sea « under ground river — fire water — air stream wa of birth of water waltz wan (one (singular ich's istence)) along a rain-pocked river across this rain-pocked lake sea be a gan gins gain air rain 'n a trance later two in one wanders the flood plain 5 among the bushes the brush the rushes the different rivers i followed the courses of - Assiniboine, Red, Seine, Neebing, Mclntyre, Kaministiqua some i knew the proper names of we called them all 'the river' heading upstream tracking the beaver dams flooded bush collecting bullrushes for my mother fell full face in the mud slow meander of sludge brown water swam in shit drifting by sewage from the towns lay south of us learned those names for water (sky aspect - storm -intermixed with elemental fire the sign for 'loud noise') understood the local & the universal but moved too often to make the local my own i was born from water bore me away from home again & again after i was born 6 'i should've been a sailor' wasn't 7 the contradiction is to spend your life on land trance fixed in the sea contra the diction is the land wage (when the water comes ~ sea pun ~ you pay a price) pays Hood flawed flowed (how you move from imperfection to imperfection in the world) my body is water my life is water ich eauech eau eau 8 ink eau ate world our obra is the water works hydro eclectic tide ties me in this flux the surface change is constantly when the flood resided i saw we'd lived under the sea all those years i never saw it til water covered me clouds blew by sea'n folds of fields appeared in air i saw the saints there & here & i think in ink particle charged airs hum anity in anity an ity world a pen opens floods over me i write from the bottom of a see step out upon the surface poetic feet give me access to stare cases & where that leads me floods the white plain page is ground/sea/sky inchoate world words seaquence 'the way', we say, 'the letters lie' EPILOGUE 35,000 feet above Saskatchewan less than a foot between me & all that air, these airs eninsubstantial as comparison spots to which we come, position ourselves heirs to the veaucabulairies terrer that fires us all gollems finally someone marks our foreheads four elements there we lurch forward enact tradition monstrously familiair familheir tribull labyrinthinemine a tour of gnossos logos osos (o that s.o.s. of consciousgnoss) or that old question 'who's the boss?1 (b.s. os) minos most of our memory we function out of loss amigos unless i've got a pun i can't write it down ink think 'is that what you mean by process?' (harbour lights th'arbor of masts & sails off the edge of your world a view venue sTREEtS lower&upper middle voice/tongue/world) i mean the earthyear the puns get the more the pen can pin it down to Pan plays the world 'pon his flute old bullfoot amazes us pipes bright as language who will wake you mourn your death & dance your resurrection sleepy giants dreaming world (the rivers branch like trees someone's always leaving (catch in the voice the ship water water water you doing? (meme eau: i'm just looking at the sea 'n world something fishy when the tongue slips (eauver & eauver))) (glimmering surface invisible depths across which the boats skip) Til write you a letter1 (A to A)) giant talk the long waged war the fight or struggle for the mind boarders in these rooms words open i said that be you said that be FORE we said that be they said that be warned letting the future know we're playing thru gulf the gulls & mist rise out of stretches between 'me1 & 'you' This page intentionally left blank BookV IN THE PLUNKETT HOTEL th<* Traveller?' , Home Away from Home Our Aim is to please our partons 'f/.. Rhone :^ ^; viscount, no. 38 rinbg4 PlunKett Hotel •Mrs. W. Workman . Proprietress At Your Service Dr^ay Sei"vice Second to None! FEED.StABLE in connection. Phone: Viscount No. 38 ring 4, W. Workman Plunkett, -Sask. In the Plunkett Hotel stairs creak all night the prairie grass beyond the shivering glass & the windowframe rustles train rushing by & the dust, the air, move in thru the pub's open door this man asking us 'you Walt & Ag Workman's kids' kids?' & we were/are blood is the line you write thru history shows thru he knew them stayed in the hotel too 1932 he said or 33 from the Plunkett Hotel i watch the solitary car turn beneath me in the street the kids who drinking in the bar all night eventually bought some roadies took off returning now parking the train rolls by stops near where the station used to be & the kids take off again returning home unlike me in the Plunkett Hotel climbing the narrow stairs sleeping where grandma & grandpa did 'i think this is the original bed' rooms rented ten fifty a night 'if they made any improvements i can't see what they did' i is trying to come home i piles i's bags on the bedside table i lives there from the Plunkett Hotel walking up the street my sister Dea, her husband & kids, this family tree branch begun in Saxony Germany eighteen thirtynein ja seems to me i take the ja way everytime i admit this history gaze over tracks into fields & trees prayer 'e made 'n (e's me (ease me thru to truth or true conclusion) i'm mi i is simply mind in motion instances in i's notion) singing 'ifamly fiamly faimly family famliy in the Plunkett Hotel my grandmother, Agnes Leigh, made the beds, cooked the meals day after day for the commercial travellers stayed there & her husband, Walter Workman, ran the dray service stabled the horses fed them water, hay & raised kids welcomed them when they came back again as they did til the hotel was sold 1941 & we are only travellers when we return customers for someone else to serve famlyi1 from the Plunkett Hotel my mother moved out into the world returning here her first few children born this is where she went when she went 'home1 none of the content remains only the frame like Great Grandpa Casper's house out there in the midst of that muddy field we stood in the wind & rain Great Uncle Fred telling me 'that's where you ma was born' no road or path to lead us there over the dark furrowed stretches of that earth from the Plunkett Hotel the roads run everywhere arbitrary centre soul heir in no way we could ever plan it we orbit there spin out centres for some other we never see Great Grandpa Casper dead fifteen years before Ma ever thot of me Great Grandma Sarah fifteen years before him we stood over there graves in the little graveyard by the side of Route 16 Dea&me these family plots more layered than we'd like to believe leaf these femme Leigh trees in the Plunkett Hotel no trace remains of what my grandparents did - the building painted, walls papered only the memory of conversations Dea&i as kids had with grandma, ma, of what went on in this building, these streets, little you can use now to feed a story - only the name, a few people in town ~ most of us drive by or tear down someone else's history (drove 20 miles to show Dea the house where Ellie was born 'torn down only the week before' don't give me that shit about the old home town) some few photos we hang onto as keepsakes from the Plunkett Hotel the roots run everywhere: Minnesota (where my grandparents met); Vermont (where my mother's mother's mother came from); England (where Walt's father came from); Saxony (where Casper's dad was born); or Toronto, where Ellie & i met, Saskatoon, where ma & pa were married, Burnaby, (where they were living when they had me) ~ the me runs everywhere like a theme moving reservoirs of cells & genes stretches out over the surface of the earth more miles than any ancestor ever dreamed we trace our dreamtime in blood, the colour of an eye, line of a chin, say 'you remind me of your grandpa' or 'you do that just the way my mother did', tribal, restless, constant only in the moving on, over the continents thru what we call our history tho it is more mystery than fact, more verb than noun, more image, finally, than story in the Plunkett Hotel we became what we really are, transient, temporal, i's in motion crossing the flickering division lines of history (our own history incomplete (more oral than written)) moved by love by longing by fear of what that love contains possessive, passionate, original, consuming, all part of finally a state of mind the real the only borders of my kind July 1st to October 23rd 1983 This page intentionally left blank Book VI THE GRACE OF THE MOMENT This page intentionally left blank Saint: From the latin sanctus, 'holy', the name applied initially to all Christians..." JCJ Metford, Dictionary of Christian Lore And Legend the grace of the moment or the necessity to live each minute as i was taught always to catch it the real ride is the present tide pulls you out mark the me's mar or are the sub stance or text of a life. so that even this vocabulary changes with the pull of present words entering the ear or eye their current's currency carries them into the unmapped reaches of your future poem let's not bring that up1 I'm too tired to discuss it* 'there's certain things we never mention' 'you show good form when you don't talk about it' like politics or the subjective voice or all the awkward feet that don't fit the antholegaic voice of the poetry biz the feverish alliteration of the fake fucks no st. algia here just the bare longing of the moment lingers mo* me(a)nt (or in the instant 'means') the tense switches (that fast) i can never fix it donkey tricks i wear this language like a bag of feed a dictionary dangling from a stick the damn nouns & verbs let's just say i love you digestion (consumed by desire by time) 'i feel a poem coming on1 like a song or attack of gas fuels your flight from past into the dizzying present of the future moment & airy in st ant's perception Td equate it thus - X + Y - present's plus pre-sentiment we see it clearly minus any consciousness of the heart's toll i know we flee into the endless nattering of soulsearching* evade the moment (imprecision of the term in which the verb 'to write1 is served) absolute absolute a brief soliloquy on lute 'music in the moment' precision of the notion second first time never is observed head flashing back on itself like a record a record of itself flashing back like a head 'i thot it was the heart with which we were concerned1 Donna dead of cancer October 21st, 1983 cousin born the same year as me carried my dead sister's name death brackets endlessly being ing be finally that aside that drop in voice notated in death's presence the dread flicks past all light & motion a film by Renoir a painting or a building if Wren were still alive saint one you roll over gather this moss or leave them two: the daily rise & fall of hierarchies dog days we carry the red ribbons mark us for death the blood of being flooding out or leeched brief bright ribbon we wrap the present in this human grace saint saint 's ain't nothin1 but what it is tongue of consciousness upon the face licked awake dream world sank t' us sunken world we walk thru at land is the lost level of our lives the 'easily gotten mystery image' any life assumes longing for distant surfaces forgotten coasts & harbours lovers in some other room the lips & limbs articulated made whole, holy in that sense, sanctus sanctuary hidden within the bright tangles of the body bright,praise, how these initials craze us dog our feet give us the right to raise our voices speak 's a peak the tongue reaches beyond because the tongue exceeds the grasp rasps against the flesh & we shudder down what good do they do? these words to mourn the death of others? this talk of love? you take the in door st. ant sunk opening we thunk as hope the dead dead cancer worms & time tormented or rapturous carried briefly beyond into a something marked as cliche we mourn nontheless thrust into insistence by the pressure of a life a death miss you/miss you/miss you cannot stop this insistent act of breath of speech each line a life everything resides in we are lief unlucky cast up on this shore the new found land another age longed for taken as familiar granted the given returns taunts us a taste on the tongue undone by the momentary pleasures of the flesh give in dig est ion or any other particle or question just ation a jest or je saint that same van very minor note daily or sailyent point a ship reaches vinland or inland dreams of oceans too wide to cross lost in the turn & toss the beloved's body catalogues (dogalogues) di in the very tac God takes against the windy breath of these songs becalmed in the vast reaches of the world to find belief & a way back home away (too wakeful to sleep y to wake lines run from the mind to the pen the tongue say love or plunge into a bitter world of beasts demons or amoral stance assumed can i take it too sing that 'wake me when the damned show up' tune? or me? locate the pro noun my life becomes work mv life assumes?) it is all personal all person & per the son that dies still bom or the son you never were but wore caught in th* e lips is life...lived, as it were, out of tune two 'n one or in one door & out the other voices speaking that this suffering is born in language that that is true & that that is true two true or wholly to be believed but who'll y' find to believe it? leave it this pain words wear carry within them like a spine involves the very line its twists & turns we say it burns it hurts the body aches the heart breaks we are dumbed or numb inarticulate in the face of it rhyme badly search for metaphors when what it is is the world that noun that thing upon which (within) this singing is the small instance of a being holy alive & holey wholly here we all want the same thing which is always different escape this flesh & lose ourselves or loose even as we stepped outside our parents' bodies as our daughters step even as the walls become waltz become 'wish i knew that two-step too1 into one makes one makes three me's & three i's & three we's we're not alone living in a mystery echoey shadowy mi fa mily so~ these difficult musics the muse sticks to the 'other' s makes the comic cosmic heaven sheaven drunk on the i's dea of paradise ideal shuffle off this mortal coil (double helix or hex reverse conjunctions where a life's made mad ('scream (milk it for all its worth))) the problem's to connect in the first place, establish how the flux creates the fax, that if our experience of 'now' is (essentially) illusory — an amalgalm of light particles & a variable ability to anticipate a sequence of future activities ~ then these flix of consciousness fix it accurately: what Wittgenstein saw (hence his use of the file card); Stein's insistent insistence (tracking the way the syntax flexes); McLuhan's sense of the thot probe ~ 'Appreciation, however, lags behind, partly owing to the inherent nature of this art. People read instead of looking; paradoxically, because letters are so familiar people do not know what they really look like.' [Nicolette Gay in The Painted Inscriptions of David Jones] tone t1 one ton e carries on its tongu life that old BLUES moan dedicates the real weight of speech 'he weighs every word1 'he's accurate to the letter1 'he's always prompt with his letters' 'answer that letter or you're out of work' now now now now now stammering accurate speech occupies the present 'spast a spa st's go to last blessings last writes death tracks the very life he rites writ large that letter of the law waltz just you & the language too this business of process nothing more than the moment's grace October 1983 thru January 1984 AFTER BIRD (improvising) This page intentionally left blank 'to let fly high/let that bird go, see how yur hand takes up the space so itself without the bird crampd in it.1 bill bissett This page intentionally left blank 1. little flight angle what i 'eard being then or not f m 'er all at once twice faster than the humming honey bee/ing's sing all that code ah that muse ic'll stick'll new little light fangle whati? what ur? word 2.(forRobinBlaser) born into on the wings of how do i how did i tie this all together { do you? i mean the lodged the bass line ic gets drawn out robin like a wormmmmmmmm after the rain? after the rain? after the rain? after the rain? after the rain? hmm? 3. no ah then just code ark de triomphe the rain bowed like a fiddle like a vial in a storm tossed sea sharp as a hill from which the dove will bird did (world) fly out into the blue 4. 'just some notes i wanted to give you* new/tra/la 'you mean--' & it is all in tension sweet viola, lets! osax! o phone! all this ringing in of changes chords i get tangled in this very communic this ear this earth this song ation 5. only the lips and what spills from them like a beak or what's in back of the rote learning the spare o's the blue j's and how they cluster then in these white remnants of the trees turn the leaves over page after page calling 6. wholly book wholly bird wholly & always completely itself fragile easy to lose what a line meant 's there it is there it is there 7 me an'i f ng (i ambient eye ear but then of course i is always rushing in & think say be sing ing 8. sky wind cloud bird wanted nothing more than that bird song wanted that nothing more then This page intentionally left blank Most of Book 6 Books has appeared previously. Thanks to the following publishers & periodicals: Camrose Review, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Canadian Literature, Capilano Review, Credences, Cross-Country, CVII, Dandelion, Gray Matters, Island, Island Press, Labrys, Malahat Review, Oolichan Books, Poetry Toronto, Rampike, Rubicon, Simon Fraser University English Dept, What, Writing. The music in The Grace of the Moment was transcribed by Ren wick Day. Hour 19 was part of a commisioned work for the Elmer Isler Singers entitled Mating Time, music by John Beckwith. The music in Hour 24 is the music of the spheres as worked out by Kepler, with the exception of the last piece which is a notation of the notes not included within Kepler's pattern (done in the pattern of Kepler).The two ads in In the Plunkett Hotel originally appeared in The Viscount Sun, Friday, February 8,1929. Quotations in this text are both real & imagined. Their point is not to push the reader out into other works (in a search for 'additional depth' as it were) but rather the texture, modulation of tone &/or authority they lend to the work in hand. But with a nod towards rabid curiosity I'll mention a few sources. The third quotation in Hour 4 is from Jack Vance's The Languages ofPao. The quote attributed to Archy in Hour 6 is, of course, from Dom Marquis' Archy and Mehitabel, the quoted fragment following it from the Mary Jane and Sniffles stories in Looney Tune Comics, & the 'turtle' fragment from Ogden Nash's famous poem. The first & last quotation in Hour 9, & the poem quoted in the middle of it, are all from the first American edition of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. The first three quotations in Hour 14, and the second last one, are from the writings of Wang Wei. The quotations in Inchoate Road Part I poems 4 & 5 are from Heraclitus, Wang Wei & Heraclitus respectively; in Part III the opening 'quote' is actually a paraphrase of part of Cid Gorman's translation of Basho's Back Roads To Far Places. Other writers' lines are echoed 6 quoted thruout The Martyrology Book 6 Books. Compositional dates refer to the dates within which the first complete draft of the relevant text was completed. Revisons continue up to the point of publication & occasionally beyond. The Martyrology Book 7 is envisioned as a boxed, unbound text. Book 8 will occur among it. Occasional bits of Canada Council & Ontario Arts Council money assisted in freeing time for the writing of parts of this work for which much thanks. Particular thanks too to Frank Davey who has gotten me going again on The Martyrology twice now: once in 1974 with a comment on Louis Dudek's work that launched me into Book 4\ again in 1978 when i had barely begun A Book of Hours & an observation he made put the work on track. And finally, much thanks to Fred Wah who told me to shut up & keep writing. bpNichol Toronto July 31,1986 A Note on Reading All spacing in The Martyrology is deliberate, including the variable spacing at tops and bottoms of pages, and should be read as part of the rhythm of the poem. Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Nichol,B.R, 1944-1988 The martyrology, book 6: 1978-1985 Facsimile ed. Poems. ISBN 0-88910-319-4 I. Title. PS8527.I32M34 1994 C811'.54 C93-093594-2 PR9199.3.N52M3 1994 Design input by Stan Bevington, bpNichol, Jerry Ofo and Gordon Robertson. Keyed on a variety of personal computers and LaserWriter typeset by Mary Scally. The paper is acid-free Zephyr Antique laid. First printed in January 1987 in an edition of 750 copies. Another 500 copies were printed in November, 1994 as a gift to the spirit of bp by the printers at the old Coach House, 401 Huron Street, on bpNichol Lane, Toronto.