Now You Care. Di Brandt
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out for sheer pleasure
over asphalt and concrete,
ribbons of dark desire
driving us madly toward death,
perverse, presiding over
five o’clock traffic
like the queens on Church Street
grand in their carstopping
high heels and blond wigs
and blue makeup, darling,
so nice to see you, and what,
dear one, exactly was the rush?
Or oceans, vast beyond ridicule
or question, and who cares if it’s
much too hot for November,
isn’t it gorgeous, darling,
and even here, in this
most polluted spit of land
in Canada, with its heart
attack and cancer rates,
the trees can still knock
you out with their loveliness
so you just wanna drop
everything and weep, or laugh,
or gather up the gorgeous
leaves, falling, and throw yourself
into them like a dead man,
or a kid, or a dog,
5
O the brave deeds of men
M*E*N, that is, they with phalli
dangling from their thighs,
how they dazzle me with
their daring exploits
every time I cross the Detroit River
from down under, I mean,
who else could have given
themselves so grandly,
obediently, to this water god,
this fierce charlatan,
this glutton for sailors and young boys,
risking limbs and lives, wordlessly
wrestling primordial mud,
so that we, mothers and maids,
could go shopping across the border
and save ourselves twenty minutes
coming and going, chatting about
this and that, our feet never
leaving the car, never mind
the mouth of the tunnel
is haunted by bits and fragments
of shattered bone and looking
every time like Diana’s bridge
in Paris, this is really grand, isn’t it,
riding our cars under the river
and coming out the other side
illegal aliens, needing passports,
and feeling like we accomplished
something, snatched from
our busy lives, just being there
Afterworlds
Gwendolyn, I call you back
from your bed of roots, delicious
under moist scented worm nudged earth,
speak to me,
rising from my bed of stone,
finding the courtyard empty,
the gate swinging open,
O prophetess of blood and fire,
your famous ancient lions crouched
beside Lake Ontario,
drunk on the jewelled wine of death,
tell me, in this unexpected resurrection,
as from drowned Atlantis out of the carnelian sea,
as from the sister watching the sister
who lies down
on the long stemmed wet grass under
rumbling steel bridges,
grateful after everything for he
who childishly plucked out her eye,
blinding her into buffalo hoofed sage scented
seeing,
tell me, princess of Babylon,
what would you have said,
had you been able, in that last moment
before the animal darkness,
to speak,
your brutal jewels flashing ornate in the naked
prairie sun,
and in what tongue, outliving for one flaming second
the devastating stages of your catastrophic
loves,
tell me, Gwendolyn,
how should I find my way
among these empty incantations,
these chipped white dishes on soap sudded oilcloth,
these nothing signs
among the walking dead,
the lilies sprouting tiger lips and rust,
the prairie struggling to rememberIn prison we ate rats
its dream wild partridge feathered feast, that exuberant
drumming?
Castle walk
after Alain Robbe-Grillet
Curses on she who asked to be
ordinary
among painted plates and cups
and bits of jam left on spoons,
willing to forget
fire flashing through
silver sheeted clouds,
her forehead bleeding,
her ragged torn heart.
In prison we ate rats after drying them in the sun. Every night God visited us in our cells, soothing or frightening us with his velvet hands and invisible dark sword.
Even now I could leap
off any shining parapet
at high noon
into the Devil’s arms
in search of that fire,
were it not for the garden warbler
nesting in the rhododendron,
pink and scarlet blossomed
under the Castle Walk,
the bluebells blazing
beside the sycamore.
The water at the bottom
of the well
remembers Queen Victoria,
Sir Wallace, and the numbers
of the dead.
Here in this red rock
overhanging the sweet path
tremble the memories
of cave dwellers,
shuddering their easy
ecstasy.