Poems from Rivard Street
by Benjamin Oldham
Pages of old birch paper
we uncovered in the earth,
the drawings of a child
scratched into the soft bark.
In one drawing,
a figure on the ground,
a lance held in the child’s hand
driven through his chest;
these are not the idle drawings
of imagination,
the child is on horseback, untouched
above the trampled figure,
he understands the position
he must inherit in this world.
In another drawing,
a wild beast, spitting fire.
Oh, he would have dreamed
to be a thing like that,
having to choose between
dying on the frozen ground
or killing on horseback,
to become instead a thing
so broken away from the world,
coming back to set it in flame,
melt the ice,
scatter the horses,
unearth the buried things—
yes, he would have dreamed.
And in that dreaming,
he would have slept
upon the birch paper,
when the dreaming crept
from small hand to tired eyes
and put the head to rest.
Yet we will never see the mark left
on the brown faded bark,
over the scratched figures,
under the dark black layers
of dirt and frozen blood;
we will never see
the gentle mark of the cheek
from the small face of a child
as he kept dreaming.
We will see the mark left
by the lance, in the rib.
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.
If I were to make a child out of clay,
I would form a little figurine from the material,
and more than arms and legs
I would give him eyes,
just small dots poked with some small stick,
and these will be the eyes that see his world.
They will not be deep or intricate eyes—
like I said, just simple dots,
but they will be enough for him
to watch the shaping of his world
while he is soft and tender.
The only other dot that I will place
is in his belly, so that he may understand
where he has come from, while he waits
to see where he is going.
The only thing with making a child out of clay
is that he must be hardened at the end
in heat and fire, and this will glaze his skin
and add texture to his simple eyes, and then he will see
that I have not shaped his world, but him alone,
that I have poked the single dot in his belly
and the two dots for eyes,
and as he has seen the forming and the firing,
as he has seen all of this,
he must see that when I make a child out of clay
I make nothing,
for he always comes out changed,
and then he is no longer a child.
But I cannot make a child out of clay
who cannot see.
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.