Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Coach House Books also gratefully acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program.

      LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

      Queyras, Sina

      Expressway / Sina Queyras.

      Poems.

      ISBN 978-1-55245-216-5

      I. Title.

      PS8583.U3414E96 2009 C811’.6 C2009-900012-1

      I

      THE ENDLESS PATH OF THE NEW

      ‘Wait now; have no rememberings of hope ... ’

      Wallace Stevens

      ‘If you can’t see the finish line in the near distance, don’t get frustrated – turn around! There you’ll see it, miles behind you.’

      Daily Horoscope, January 18, 2007

      SOLITARY

      1

      What sympathy of sounds? What cricketing

      Of concrete, what struck rubber, what society

      And shifting birdsong sweetens spring’s tumult?

      She walks near the expressway, a patch

      Of emerald turf besieged by doggy bags,

      Where frolicking hounds squat to pee, crimson

      Cellphone at her ear. She is calling home,

      Calling the past, calling out for anyone

      To hear. She is waiting, she is wanting

      To be near, of flesh, of earth, on foot,

      And this is her perspective: the 1-95, its

      Prow of condos, the Delaware’s sunken

      Ships and artillery shells, now the idea of River, so many years since any live flesh Could be immersed. Here the expressway

      Smoothing each nuisance of wild, each terrifying

      Quirk of land, uneven, forlorn paths; wanderer,

      Wander, lonely as a cloud, dappled, drowned,

      A melancholic pace and nowhere untouched. Nature,

      One concludes, is nostalgia. Now, two hundred

      Post-Romantic years – the Alps bursting into flames,

      All the way to Mont Blanc, incendiary air. How far

      Auschwitz? Darfur? Are we a hopeful people

      Yet? She follows her uncle’s gestures, paced

      For lungs, each strike of stick to stone, recalls

      Wordsworth’s dog, the solitary path unwinds below.

      2

      What sympathy of sounds. Her father

      A bag she carries in a bigger bag, lighter

      Now, having scattered him across two

      Provinces, up a goat path, where these

      Struck peaks, a starburst of contrails, German

      Songs like silt, and tiny woollen cathedrals

      Whose bells mark the hours. Have we suffered enough?

      Her uncle bends his century, a creeping juniper

      Under which lies a tiny tin cup. Doucement,

      Doucement, the water another source, a Knowing (even without language) where To drink, or how (and where) one foot

      Should fall well before it does, recognition of

      The stone’s slice; that even rock is not solid;

      Such knowledge a long-time companion rarely

      Of any use other than to remind: be open, flexible,

      Eye on the horizon, thumb in air for change,

      Change; history with its multiple pathways.

      It is not her first time here, though, in truth,

      It is. But what is truth? Fact? Body? Idea?

      Word? The heat waking up now, a new century

      Ahead, and at the top, a bit of bread and cheese,

      A cellphone out, Ta mère, he says, Tell her your father is laid to rest.

      3

      But is anyone at rest? She traces roadways where

      In occupied France her father rode his bicycle

      High above the Durance, finding – as we all

      Wish – a smooth path between rivets

      Of the newly erected metal bridge, his hands

      High above his head, or so one version

      Of the legend goes. What balance, what

      Lack of fear, what shock of hair, what finesse

      Of foot and pout of mouth, what eloquent

      Dismount, his aunts below not daring

      To call out for fear of distracting he who

      Like Christ could turn gravity on its head,

      And for whom two sisters would devote their lives –

      If not in flesh, then in suffering. What

      Sympathy of sounds? Do tell me his pain

      Was not in vain. Do say the bees will return,

      And with them, seasons.

      4

      What sounds, what sympathy, what silence, what

      Creation? What recompense? What word? What land?

      What river bottoms once muscular, tracing lifelines,

      Deltas, flood plains; what land bunching, ruffling,

      What stones rolling, what wheels (wooden, steel,

      Rubber), what riding out on horseback, what

      Flick of wrist, tug of tether, blast of rock,

      What melting of rubber, what extension of self, what

      Squeak of progress, what eye, what level, what

      Parcelling and flattening, what neatly bundling,

      What legacy? What future? What expressway? What

      Goat trail on steroids, what native path, canoe trail,

      Wagon train, trail of tears, what aggregate composition,

      What filleted history, what strata, what subplates,

      What tectonic metaphor, what recoil, what never

      Having to deal with the revulsion of self, only

      The joy of forward, the joy of onward, the endless fuel:

      The