October

Man and His World

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.

Keep Me

In children’s rituals

we used to play

games of evasion.

We used to say:

If you could have

the power to fly

or turn invisible…

You would find a way

to leave this world.

If only we knew then

what I know now,

that the wind on my face

is as cold as the looks

of people on the street

who do not see me.

I am afraid now

of flying over

a frigid world

that does not know me.

I am afraid

of being forgotten.

In a ritual to my children,

one day I will say:

Keep me on this earth.

Hold me in the eye

of your memory.

I have walked

the same ground

as you, unable to

leave this world,

and the earth is cold

beneath my feet,

but the faces of people

are warm,

and the wind plays

its own games

in another realm.

Keep me,

I am afraid the power

I chose in a ritual

I began so long ago

is the one I must bear

in the end.

Self Portrait (The Mill Town)

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 Banquet

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.

Let It Only Be the Mountain

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.