Now You Care. Di Brandt
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on the windiest days,
the chorus of ancestors
full throated among the trees,
bits of severed limbs
float through the room,
the blue plastic thermos
in the window promises
black tea and landmines
halfway across the world.
The surface keeps slipping, Alain.
Somewhere deep inside us
the centre holds.
Say it is so, Chinua,
say it is so.
The poets visit the Rosewell Arms
Surprised to find,
on their country rambles,
how he singles her out
in every pub,
the ‘village drunk,’
proclaiming his love:
They don’t know, Robbie, they don’t know, the kinship of those who walk, as we have done, through living fire.
His friends clap him
on the back, laugh,
pour him another drink,
she turns back to the bar,
smiling, glass in hand,
discussing Yeats.
The floor rocks under
his sea legs, his skin burns.
Long ago he learned
to substitute drink
for touch, to hold
the terror in.
So many unrequited singers, Bobby. The fire made diamonds of your eyes. The breathing world cries, ‘I love you too.’
A modest proposal
This night I am haunted by your stray dogs, Frankie,
of Albert Street, their thin, eager love, abject,
you called it, useful, waving your hand, smiling slightly, over
shrimp cocktail and Chablis, nicely
chilled, their backbones broken, flesh frozen into fear.
Let me confess, dear Francis, your confessions were not
unattractive to me, your wife the psychologist busy
helping every poor sinner and no time for you.
Your shaking hand, your heaving trembling chest.
Your twenty year sacrifice of every tender feeling
in the name of civic love. Your soldier’s fortitude.
Your impressive million dollar contract to inject them
with whatever poison you feel like to advance our knowledge of
their pain. Like every poet I can
assure you I have prostituted myself for less, gathering fuel in
vacant lots, so zu sprechen, Herr Doktor,
wagging my tail, eagerly, panting for healing in the morning and
vivisection at night, suffering
my sainthood graciously, my bowels domesticated,
my howls unheard in the abandoned hermitage.
St. Norbert in August
How the primroses hurt us
in the ripeness of summer
among the cathedral ruins,
the stones singing,
the grass stirring in the heat,
bees thrumming,
the flies lazy, contented,
the shining wheat
(‘O how the wheat is shining’)
the brown river sluggish,
the gnarled apple trees,
the maples surrounded by light,
the goldenrod,
the grasshoppers,
sweet clover on the wind,
wild turkeys parading
through the wild grass,
the sun heavy on the earth,
our thirsty skin heaving,
the bandura dancing, O!
St. Norbert in July
after Louise Halfe
Throb of buffalo
herds, drumming
under the earth.
Whiff of sage
in the wind.
Chokecherry
branches, bowing,
heavy with fruit.
Sob of grass.
Wheels rumbling.
Burning tipis,
smoking flesh.
I Thirst Dance,
Ghost Dance,
I Give-Away Dance,
Beg Dance.
‘Shot our children
as they gathered
wood.’
Skull Dance.
‘A mountain of bones.’
Accidentally
Because the millennium has ended. Because the children have taken over the monasteries, and filled them with fishnets, wildflowers, paper lanterns, donkeys made of straw.
Because Our Lady of the Prairies stepped down off her pedestal last August, walked across the yellow stubble fields in her white silk dress, and didn’t come back.
When the rivers flooded and the grass along the banks turned black, and the mosquitoes came, billions of them, to plague us.
Our first born, daughters, angry as hell at our parental betrayal of them, we didn’t know, we didn’t know.
At the poetry festival, all the young women wore violets and goldenrod in their hair.
They said the house was haunted, and it was, the dead walking through it, dazed, in black and red velvet, the children screaming at them, joyful and afraid, the monks sullen, retreating in the shadows.
Alissa, alone among the children, stared back at the ghost bride in her faded brocade, let the white gloved hand of death touch her cheek, and didn’t flinch. Her memory welling up in her like a flame, spider knowledge.
You were there, then, with red hair, carrying one of the dead over your shoulder, and your aura of sadness, in all that commotion, cut a wave of silence in the air.
Who knows why anything happens? Or how lucky we are, in spite of these alarms, these signs of an era ending, and new beginnings?
The spirits have been good to us, have visited us, with blessings, in spite of our inattention, our distractedness, and yes, we are grateful, we are deeply grateful, though we have forgotten the words for this prayer, this alleluia, this amen.
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