January 28 1 962
My abandoned narcotics have
abandoned me
January 28 1962
7 : 30 must have dug its
pikes into your blue wrist
January 28 1 962
I shoved the transistor up my ear
And putting down
3 loaves of suicide (?)
2 razorblade pies
1 De Quincey hairnet
(sic)
a collection of oil
(sic)
6 lysol eye foods
he said with considerable charm and travail:
Is this all I give?
One lousy reprieve
at 2 in the morning?
This?
I'd rather have a job.
I 9'
I W A N T E D T O B E A D O C T O R
The famous doctor held up Grandma's stomach.
Cancer! Cancer! he cried out.
The theatre was brought low.
None of the internes thought about ambition.
Cancer! They all looked the other way.
They thought Cancer would leap out
and get them. They hated to be near.
This happened in Vilna in the Medical School.
Nobody could sit still.
They might be sitting beside Cancer.
Cancer was present.
Cancer had been let out of its bottle.
I was looking in the skylight.
I wanted to be a doctor.
All the internes ran outside.
The famous doctor held on to the stomach.
He was alone with Cancer.
Cancer! Cancer! Cancer!
He didn't care who heard or didn't hear.
It was his 87th Cancer.
92 I
O N H E A R I N G A N A M E
L O N G U N S P O K E N
Listen to the stories
men tell of last year
that sound of other places
though they happened here
Listen to a name
so private it can burn
hear it said aloud
and learn and learn
History is a needle
for putting men asleep
anointed with the poison
of all they want to keep
Now a name that saved you
has a foreign taste
claims a foreign body
froze in last year's waste
And what is living lingers
while monuments are built
then yields its final whisper
to letters raised in gilt
But cries of stifled ripeness
whip me to my knees
I am with the falling snow
falling in the seas
I am with the hunters
hungry and shrewd
I 93
and I am with the hunted
quick and soft and nude
I am with the houses
that wash away in rain
and leave no teeth of pillars
to rake them up again
Let men numb names
scratch winds that blow
listen to the stories
but what you know you know
And knowing is enough
for mountains such as these
where nothing long remains
houses walls or trees
94 I
S T Y L E
I don't believe the radio stations
of Russia and America
but I like the music and I like
the solemn European voices announcing jazz
I don't believe opium or money
though they're hard to get
and punished with long sentences
I don't believe love
in the midst of my slavery I
do not believe
I am a man sitting in a house
on a treeless Argolic island
I will forget the grass of my mother's lawn
I know I will
I will forget the old telephone number
Fitzroy seven eight two oh
I will forget my style
I will have no style
I hear a thousand miles of hungry static
and the old clear water eating rocks
I hear the bells of mules eating
I hear the flowers eating the night
under their folds
Now a rooster with a razor
plants the haemophilia gash across
the soft black sky
and now I know for certain
I will forget my style
Perhaps a mind will open in this world
perhaps a heart will catch rain
Nothing will heal and nothing will freeze
but perhaps a heart will catch rain
I 95
America will have no style
Russia will have no style
It is happening in the twenty-eighth year
of my attention
I don't know what will become
of the mules with their lady eyes
or the old clear water
or the giant rooster
The early morning greedy radio eats
the governments one by one the languages
the poppy fields one by one
Beyond the numbered band
a silence develops for every style
for the style I laboured on
an external silence like the space
between insects in a swarm
electric unremembering
and it is aimed at us
(I am sleepy and frightened)
it makes toward me brothers
g6 I
G O E B B E L S A B A N D O N S H I S N O V E L
A N D J O I N S T H E P A R T Y
His last love poem
broke in the harbour
where swearing blondes
loaded scrap
into rusted submarines.
Out in the sun
he was surprised
to find himself lustless
as a wheel.
More simple than money
he sat in some spilled salt
and wondered if he would find again
the scars of lampposts
ulcers of wrought-iron fence.
He remembered perfectly
how he sprung
his father's heart attack
and left his mother
in a pit
memory white from loss of guilt.
Precision in the sun
the elevators
the pieces of iron
broke whatever thous
his pain had left
like a whistle breaks
a gang of sweating men.
Ready to join the world
yes yes ready to marry
convinced pain a matter of choice
a Doctor of Reason
I 97
he began to count the ships
decorate the men.
Will dreams threaten
this discipline
will favourite hair favourite thighs
last life's sweepstake winners
drive him to adventurous cafes?
Ah my darling pupils
do you think there exists a hand
so bestial in beauty so ruthless
that can switch off
his religious electric Exlax light?
H I T L E R T H E B R A I N - M O L E
Hitler the brain-mole looks out of my eyes
Goering boils ingots of gold in my bowels
My Adam's Apple bulges with the whole head of Goebbels
No use to tell a man he's a Jew
I'm making a lampshade out of your kiss
Confess! confess!
is what you demand
although you believe you're giving me everything
gs I
I T U S E S U S I
&nbs
p; Come upon this heap
exposed to camera leer:
would you snatch a skull
for midnight wine, my dear?
Can you wear a cape
claim these burned for you
or is this death unusable
alien and new?
In our leaders' faces
(albeit they deplore
the past) can you read how
they love Freedom more?
In my own mirror
their eyes beam at me:
my face is theirs, my eyes
burnt and free.
Now you and I are mounted
on this heap, my dear:
from this height we thrill
as boundaries disappear.
Kiss me with your teeth.
A ll things can be done
whisper museum ovens of
a war that Freedom won.
I 99
M Y T E A C H E R I S D Y I N G
Martha they say you are gentle
No doubt you labour at it
Why is it I see you
leaping into unmade beds
strangling the telephone
Why is it I see you
hiding your dirty nylons
in the fireplace
Martha talk to me
My teacher is dying
His laugh is already dead
that put cartilage
between the bony facts
Now they rattle loud
Martha talk to me
Mountain Street is dying
Apartment fifteen is dying
Apartment seven and eight are dying
All the rent is dying
Martha talk to me
I wanted all the dancers' bodies
to inhabit like his old classroom
where everything that happened
was tender and important
Martha talk to me
Toss out the fake Jap silence
Scream in my kitchen
logarithms laundry lists anything
Talk to me
My radio is falling to pieces
My betrayals are so fresh
they still come with explanations
100 1
Martha talk to me
What sordid parable
do you teach by sleeping
Talk to me
for my teacher is dying
The cars are parked
on both sides of the street
some facing north
some facing south
I draw no conclusions
Martha talk to me
I could burn my desk
when I think how perfect we are
you asleep me finishing
the last of the Saint Emilion
Talk to me gentle Martha
dreaming of percussions massacres
hair pinned to the ceiling
I'll keep your secret
Let's tell the milkman
we have decided
to marry our rooms
1 101
F O R M Y O L D L A Y T O N
His pain, unowned, he left
in paragraphs of love, hidden,
like a cat leaves shit
under stones, and he crept out in day,
clean, arrogant, swift, prepared
to hunt or sleep or starve.
The town saluted him with garbage
which he interpreted as praise
for his muscular grace. Orange peels,
cans, discarded guts rained like ticker-tape.
For a while he ruined their nights
by throwing his shadow in moon-full windows
as he spied on the peace of gentle folk.
Once he envied them. Now with a happy
screech he bounded from monument to monument
in their most consecrated plots, drunk
to know how close he lived to the breathless
in the ground, drunk to feel how much he loved
the snoring mates, the old, the children of the town.
Until at last, like Timon, tired
of human smell, resenting even
his own shoe-steps in the wilderness,
he chased animals, wore live snakes, weeds
for bracelets. When the sea
pulled back the tide like a blanket
he slept on stone cribs, heavy,
dreamless, the salt-bright atmosphere
like an automatic laboratory
building crystals in his hair.
102 1
F I N A L L Y I C A L L E D
Finally I called the people I didn't want to hear from
After the third ring I said
I'll let it ring five more times then what will I do
The telephone is a fine instrument
but I never learned to work it very well
Five more rings and I'll put the receiver down
I know where it goes I know that much
The telephone was black with silver rims
The booth was cozier than the drugstore
There were a lot of creams and scissors and tubes
I needed for my body
I was interested in many coughdrops
I believe the drugstore keeper hated
his telephone and people like me
who ask for change so politely
I decided to keep to the same street
and go into the fourth drugstore
and call them again
I 103
T H E O N L Y T O U R I S T I N H A V A N A
T U R N S H I S T H O U G H T S H O M E W A R D
Come, my brothers,
let us govern Canada,
let us find our serious heads,
let us dump asbestos on the White House,
let us make the French talk English,
not only here but everywhere,
let us torture the Senate individually
until they confess,
let us purge the New Party,
let us encourage the dark races
so they'll be lenient
when they take over,
let us make the esc talk English,
let us all lean in one direction
and float down
to the coast of Florida,
let us have tourism,
let us flirt with the enemy,
let us smelt pig-iron in our back yards,
let us sell snow
to under-developed nations,
(Is it true one of our national leaders
was a Roman Catholic?)
let us terrorize Alaska,
let us unite
Church and State,
let us not take it lying down,
let us have two Governor Generals
at the same time,
let us have another official language,
let us determine what it will be,
1 04 I
let us give a Canada Council Fellowship
to the most origiral suggestion,
let us teach sex in the home
to parents,
let us threaten to join the U.S.A.
and pull out at the last moment,
my brothers, come,
our serious heads are waiting for us somewhere
like Gladstone bags abandoned
after a coup d'etat,
let us put them on very quickly,
let us maintain a stony silence
on the St. Lawrence Seaway.
Havana
April 1961
I 105
M I L L E N N I U M
This could be my little
book about love
if I wrote it-
but my good demon said:
"Lay off documents! "
Everybody was watching me
burn my books-
! swung my liberty torch
happy as a gestapo brute;
the only thing I wanted to save
&nbs
p; was a scar
a burn or two-
but my good demon said:
"Lay off documents!
The fire's not important!"
The pile was safely blazing.
I went home to take a bath.
I phoned my grandmother.
She is suffering from arthritis.
"Keep well," I said, "don't mind the pain."
"You neither," she said.
Hours later I wondered
did she mean
don't mind my pain
or don't mind her pain?
Whereupon my good demon said:
"Is that all you can do?"
Well was it?
Was it all I could do?
There was the old lady
eating alone, thinking about
Prince Albert, Flanders Field,
w6 1
Kishenev, her lingers too sore
for TV knobs;
but how could I get there?
The books were gone
my address lists-
My good demon said again:
"Lay off documents!
You know how to get there! "
And suddenly I did!
I remembered it from memory!
I found her
poring over the royal family tree,
"Grandma,"
I almost said,
� � [j]
"you've got it upside down-"
"Take a look," she said,
"it only goes to George V."
� fB]�
"That's far enough
you sweet old blood!"
11@ � �
"You're right! " she sang
�Wt�li.l�
and burned the
London Illustrated Souvenir
I did not understand
the day it was
till I looked outside
and saw a lire in every
window on the street
and crowds of humans
crazy to talk
and cats and dogs and birds
smiling at each other!
I 107
A L E X A N D E R T R O C C H I , P U B L I C
J U N K I E , P R I E Z P O U R N O U S
Who is purer
more simple than you?
Priests play poker with the burghers,
police in underwear
leave Crime at the office,
our poets work bankers' hours
retire to wives and fame-reports.
The spike flashes in your blood
permanent as a silver lighthouse.
I'm apt to loaf
in a coma of newspapers,
avoid the second-hand bodies
which cry to be catalogued.
I dream I'm
a divine right Prime Minister,
I abandon plans for bloodshed in Canada.
I accept an O-B.E-
Under hard lights
with doctors' instruments
you are at work
in the bathrooms of the city,
changing The Law.
I tend to get distracted
by hydrogen bombs,
by Uncle's disapproval
of my treachery
to the men's clothing industry-
lOS I
I find mysel£
believing public clocks,
taking advice
from the Dachau generation.
Selected Poems, 1956-1968 Page 6
