Poems from Rivard Street
by Benjamin Oldham
How can I see this world
and not get carried away
by the grace of it all?
For every two lovers, say,
breaking up
on some park bench
(not a bad public place
to break the news,
I remember that,
the bench really feeling
bad about the whole thing),
there are two friends
making up
on some heart to heart,
side by side
on a long walk
after an even longer freezing out
and some sucking in of pride
at the end there
that really saved it,
I remember that too.
Grace, and I can see it
lifting off the rooftops
like mist in the dawn,
lifting me with it,
and up here
the doves are taking tufts
of every friend and lover’s hair
from the park benches
and the heart to hearts,
pecking at each other’s beaks
with little kisses
like the ones
the lovers missed
but the friends found again,
and oh, whatever we may be
to one another,
however treated,
however hurt, mistaken,
hated, saved,
the dovetails of our lives
will carry us away,
make grace.
Such ordinary things
I've seen today:
those iron stairs
outside that building
on my street,
once all black and rusted
now all painted pink
and curling up,
side by side
into the places of neighbors.
I wondered
if those two neighbors
know how alike they are
in the order of things,
every morning
as they walk
out of the bedroom
and into the bathroom,
the kitchen,
then out the door,
each down their
new pink stairs,
and into one another
at the bottom.
They are leaving
in the same direction,
but one of them
will cross the street,
or linger by the stairs
a moment
then walk behind,
a bit slower,
thinking
they aren’t close enough
to walk together,
or don’t want
to make small talk
about such ordinary things
as new pink stairs—
though neither do I,
seeing as I keep straying
from the subject
as if it cannot stay
ordinary for long.
Somewhere already
in your mind you know
a place like this,
a city below the hill.
The air is thin
to breathe in such a place,
to dream, to shout
unheard to mortal gods
you feel
the aspirations of life
hung wet and heavy
from the cold fog
that rolls down the hill
and mingles with smoke,
aspirations like
damp coughs
and hissing fires
that will not light,
aspirations like dreams
that die in the night.
But that is not the story
of a complete people.
To live asleep in such a place,
to sleep awake,
to watch the lights
that glitter on the hill
as unmistakable as stars,
that is the condition
that whets the aspiration,
sharpens the living edge,
burns brighter than
any wet match or lighter
struck in a storm,
hand or not
around the flame—
the one condition
that bargains with you
in your mind:
the kind of mortal god
that you would be
in the city above the hill.
It all began with the wind,
and the two of us
in a swirling tunnel of it,
flinging model planes
into the drafts
rising up the hills
and off the fields
when we were young.
It was all before a time
when the wind first rose
enough to carry us
to land apart
from one another:
me, in the north,
you, in the south.
Only when the wind was fair
did it trade us back again.
And so it was for a time.
West you went,
restlessly into the world,
then east over the sea
as I thought you would.
And finding there
that the world is wide,
you found too
that a life is made
in the thin space
that surrounds us,
the thin space
that catches the wind.
And now,
now the wind is fair,
it has brought you back to me
and caught you
in a rock by the sea
that will not let you go.
The wind is fair now,
and it is settling,
as are you.
Now we can watch your plane
slip into the draft
above the field we know,
in the thin space
around the gliding wings,
and hear only the wind
on the hillside
of this wide world of ours,
rising and settling
and rising again
as it always has
since it all began.
We have seen the night,
its white marble stars
like pinholes pricked
in a dark fabric
and held against the light,
the way a child hides
under a blanket,
warm and safe and comforted,
and in this darkness
man has seen of dreaming
in his world.
But in this new land
we have imagined
a world without a fabric,
where we can see beyond
with eyes undarkened;
and not to remove it
from older lands
as if that would be violence,
we moved great tons of earth
to establish a new land,
an exposition
of things yet unknown
or yet to be seen,
and imagined the world there,
and we filled it
with the dirt we carried
from the tunnels we dug
to bring us there.
And in these tunnels,
from beginning to end,
two solitudes became one:
the solitude of man
working in the dark,
digging straight,
knowing nothing but
breath on the tunnel wall,
but dreaming,
even without stars,
of the marble pavilions
at the end.
So in these pavilions
to man and his world
we have torn down the firmament,
we have washed the world
in the white light
that lies beyond,
we have invited the citizens
of a thousand nations,
and they have come out
from the tunnels
to the new land,
cold and tired and hopeful,
like from winter burrows
to a wet dripping spring
that blinds the eyes for a moment
as they search for sight
before the opening
of the world.
The young man comes
from an old mill town,
a place where the mill pond
is just a pond
since all the mills have gone,
and even if you could
just take away the names
of things like that,
how would he know?
He left the town
like the industry did
when a new age came,
and came to this new place
to throw his child’s heart
into the world.
A progress happened then
he could not see,
for progress is not seen
in a single glance,
or frame of mind, or heart—
progress is the slow planting
of saplings in the earth,
the slow retrieving of the heart
from outside the body.
And that child’s heart
he cast into the world
returned with time to the town
to the sight of a million saplings,
the site of a milling
of things to come
from things that were:
one act of transformation
becoming another, another,
and covering the landscape
in the green shoots of progress.
His heart, when it came back,
had lost a name, just like that.
There is progress now
in this new place,
in all he touches, all he sees;
in everything there is progress again!
There is progress on Rivard Street,
and St. Joseph and St. André
and Hutchison, and in the ruelles
that spill their summer flowers,
there is progress going back
some ten years now
in places he has learned to live,
progress in the sight of his eyes,
the form of his mind, yes,
but progress also in his heart,
the red red living crimson heart
and all at once, it seems;
somewhere in this place,
he must have learned
to reach inside
and touch it.
The snow is set lightly
on tables in the park
we pass by on our evening walk.
Winter lays a fine banquet,
don’t you think?
Even the boughs of trees
bend to us slightly
like polite waiters
with bottles of wine.
Waiter, you ask,
could we be seated by a window?
We’d like to watch
the snow come down.
We sit, and the snow flits
in the streetlight halos
like cooks in the port windows
of the kitchen, preparing
the courses of the seasons.
The snow makes all
sound silent and lonely
and seals our little hall
from the world.
We may take our time to dine,
only keeping in mind
that one day this white cloth
will melt to nothing
but the new soft wood
of the table it covers,
and spill into our laps
like a tipped water pitcher,
at which you will stand up
to throw your napkin and leave
through the grass and the flowers,
being rude to the waiters.
The waiters, they will be standing
straight as coat racks
and the once attentive boughs
where we left our hats
will not bend to us,
for our graceful host will have gone
and left them unenchanted.
Let us avoid all that,
and clear this table
so that it may be set again.
Height has no place
in this city.
We are not one
for tall buildings
or pride risen fat
like dough;
you may find them still,
but all is in deference
to the height of
a certain mountain.
The only height above
is below, in train stations
thirty meters deep,
where the platforms
are battered by the wind
just the same as
the tops of mountains.
We gather there,
keeping watch
for passing trains to take us
from summit to summit
and village to village,
all peopled
by the many faces
of strangers, who are
all weighed upon the same
by a mountain
whose burden we have taken,
whose rock and earth
press down
on our collective movement
below the streets
and bury our shared differences.
So when we leave our stations
and return to the streets,
out into the open air
from the gusting doors,
we descend
from a great height
to solid ground again,
and we look up at the mountain
that weighs
upon our shoulders—
the same shoulders
that bustle against yours and mine
on the passing trains—
and we may see why
there is no place for height
in this city.
The height is taken;
let it only be
the mountain.
In my mind
when I imagine them,
church bells always ring evenly,
one after the other
and spaced well apart
to pass the time.
Now here I am,
it is not even noon but ten past
and the bells are ringing
one over the other
like lapping tides
in lapsing time:
ding dedong, dedong ding
dong, ding degong!
Can it really be
that the timing of the bells
has changed so much?
In a small town
I had a structured upbringing,
and the bells always rang evenly
and on the hour
at the parish church,
like the chuffing of the train
that passes by the mill dam
every day at noon.
Now I am here
and the trains pass all the time,
and there is chuffing and ringing
from all around.
I think the bells have loosened
in this place,
as even I may.
Oh Ruelle, you street between streets,
swept between the affairs of working streets
you long to feel the footsteps of,
what right do I have to tell you what to want?
You with your wrought-iron stairs
and clotheslines of drying fare,
whose snowbanks are not cleared until
summer flowers spill over the rink-sides,
who peer into the street from lowered elbows
to watch the wiping clear of brows,
how can I tell you that you don’t need their affairs,
that you are more open when you are closed,
that you are tender cartilage between working joints,
and that every working street needs its ruelle
so that every commotion may have its coming to rest?
Maybe I am selfish. Rest with me now, and not long,
for the day is done, and I come to you
with more important affairs.