Ashland

by Gil Adamson

He believed horses and dogs could speak

  but chose not to.

  Men’s talk of firearms always struck him as smutty

  and he wore his own gun far back, so as not to see it.

  In his mind, he kept things in natural categories:

  vegetables, fences and cattle;

  iron, oak, saw grass;

  urine and pines.

  Electricity was alone in its department.

  He knew the Virgin Mary was in heaven with her body

  and it was sinful to wonder where heaven was.

  Eating depressed him, so he ate sparingly, in private.

  Things were either useful to him, or dangerous or boring;

  they came into the world together,

  and went out the same way, like drowning men.

  A horse bit him once, so he bit it back.

  Then it bit him again, and he laughed.

  He would tell that story to explain himself to people.

  He would tell it to women.

  Never could he fathom why his father had to exist.

  Sometimes, watching a thing in pain, his eyes would water

  as if the sight burned them, but it was not crying.

  He was publicly against self-abuse and yet he

  masturbated alone, for his health, without knowing

  this action had a name, or that others did it too.

  He wasn’t sure what virginity was, really.

  The bullets went into other people this way:

  kneecap, cheek, above the left nipple,

  through the eye and out the opposite ear,

  heart, lungs, heart again, buttocks.

  The knives did this:

  into a wooden door; across a girth strap, severing it;

  across the cheek; under the jaw; in the side above gun belt.

  In all of this there was much shouting, much swearing.

  There never was a certain woman or a favourite gun

  or a nervous tick or a gesture all his own.

  In death, his body was white and supple and nearly unmarked.

  His last words were much disputed, but the truth is,

  what he said was: “Here’s your money.”

  He loved to attend the ballet and would sit forward in his seat,

  a fixed and artificial smile on his lips.

  At intermissions, he would abuse those who’d fallen asleep

  and slap the cigars from their mouths.

  He would leave the room if a glass broke,

  considering it the worst possible luck, though

  he knew glasses broke all the time and disaster

  seemed to come to him when it wished.

  He was horrified by deformity; a mangled hand

  or missing tooth made him feel

  that evil lingered there and erased flesh.

  He ate no meat or fish, on humanitarian grounds,

  but he liked a nice baked chicken,

  since he considered poultry too stupid to know.

  When he was eight, on his mother’s saint-day,

  he killed some dogs.

  He was sent to a fanatical and dwarfish judge

  where he was made to read the bible out loud,

  was caned before lunch, and had to kiss the judge’s lips

  in the dim hallway of the courthouse.

  This formed in him a certain dislike of authority,

  though many believe that was latent in him anyway.

  After leaving home, he travelled for months,

  saw the carcasses of deer, horses, cattle, dogs.

  He imagined it was money that brought bad dreams,

  so at night he threw coins into the dark

  and went searching at dawn.

  He saw women’s clothes hung on tree branches to dry,

  the yaw of pressing flesh moulded to the cloth

  and hung brazen in the wind.

  He saw a town burn high and white, a loud municipal closure,

  flames spreading as if swept by vindictive tongues,

  and the dogs that ran through the smoke baying

  looked to him like devils come up to cheer.

  He was suddenly awake in his century,

  a young man, skin light as bottle glass,

  his ideas about things forming one by one;

  shiny objects left on a fence by passing hands.

  He would inspect his own body in a shaving mirror,

  the disc of light trembling,

  and he imagined his public self was this detailed.

  He never saw his final wound, a grey-crusted hole

  where blood escaped lavishly

  and the skin briefly boiled.

  He learned to read, and then forgot again.

  He had a thin, light tenor voice,

  but could not be induced to sing, unless he was paid.

  If you stood his victims in a church and caused them all

  to stamp at the same moment, the steeple bell would ring.

  In movies he has died in a hail of bullets,

  died in bars, night fields, streets lit by gaslight.

  He has died gracefully in hospital, in his mother’s arms,

  died saying: “Take it back, all of it,”

  his hands rising over the sheets, holding nothing.

  The actors who portrayed him have been tall and dark,

  or short and Irish and mean,

  they have raised his arms in joy at Mexican weddings,

  made him drunk and stumbling and wasting many bullets.

  In theatres big and small, he has sung songs of love,

  run for public office, helped lost tourists.

  In the north there has been an all-woman show, with no killing.

  His face has changed and smoothed and altered,

  his own words have turned fake as duck calls in other mouths.

  He has no grave marker; historians cannot even agree

  on where his mother took him to be buried.

  Imagine this, another story:

  The boy sits on the courthouse steps, and behind him

  sits the judge, bent to his ear, whispering.

  Swifts worry the air, calling, and the ground

  is crawling with the time-lapse fury of insects.

  The natural world rages, unimpressed at the threats,

  biblical quotes, the whispered entreaties of the law;

  the lesson goes on in the face of its own extinction.

  The boy is made to understand that men are good or bad,

  so a rift of nothingness lies between the two.

  “He comes from dust and goes back to dust,” says the judge.

  “He bringeth light or darkness with him, you little prick.”

  This was how it started, this was the bright object

  left upon a fence, the gift that delivered him to us, fast, perfect:

  “He that is not with me,” says the judge, “is against me,”

  and unseen birds thrill in the trees above.

  The Apprentice

  I was a hungry infant carried in a soldier’s pocket.

  He used to stroke my little head for luck.

  In the city, we saw a wagonload of cheese.

  All the people stood silent as it passed,

  because it was meant for the royal family

  and it was poisoned.

  The soldier’s rough thumb

  squeezed my ear so hard that day

  I cackled like the trees do back home,

  before winter catches them.

  After that, we killed many people

  and the taverns shut down until we were caught.

  My
protector was hanged

  and I wept, swinging

  in the hammock of his stiff fingers.

  An old hen called up to me, seeming

  to make polite apologies,

  but really she wanted to see me up close;

  the innocent foundling.

  I saw the shadow of a boot pass over her,

  then swing away again.

  Rattling By

  Dead men go along the road

  in twos and threes,

  waving goodbye with their toes.

  The scaffold folds into a suitcase!

  “Will wonders ever cease?” we ask,

  and the hangman, who is blind,

  kindly and rich says, “Yes.”

  Heaven

  We have heard stories of Jesuits

  being flayed, their hearts eaten.

  We see smoke above the trees sometimes.

  God gives no rebuke,

  the tent preachers say,

  because to him we are the sweetest song.

  But a saint came through last week,

  just a few dry sticks in a cloak.

  He had no head!

  Where are the torches on the fishing boats,

  where is the singing, the women

  lying down in ploughed fields to count sheep?

  Even the clouds move higher and higher,

  as if something up there has withered.

  As usual, it is dark among the pews.

  No one makes demands of the little

  unpainted Madonna. No one knocks on her door.

  Unpleasant Coincidence

  It’s night in Unpleasant Coincidence.

  An eclipse yet.

  We leave the rain-soaked horses in the hotel bar

  which has no roof, no walls, no bar.

  Women are everywhere in lighted tents,

  their heads making fists of shadow.

  But because I am dressed like a man,

  I must stand out here and wallow in my success.

  The galaxies spin overhead, getting a bead on us all.

  We pray for food and a terrified bird

  falls into our hands. I get the feet.

  “Let’s go,” says my chorus of lice.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  But that’s what they said last time,

  and now look where we are.

  Husband

  I descend by moonlight onto the plain.

  Wolves have left rivers in the grass

  which I follow until the town

  sits up out of the earth.

  Wet smell from the corral . . .

  horses avoid me, shouldering each other along,

  a hushed parade.

  I float in the dark.

  I want a husband.

  It is a slow search, but pleasant.

  Windows pass like clouds

  until I catch a ride on one, bend through

  to look down at a bed.

  “No,” says my nose,

  but I crawl in to see anyway.

  Weeks pass in the tavern before he is missed,

  and in the field, boys step in patiently

  and take up his work.

  Rest

  The crow is a creature of many mysteries.

  For instance he has two hearts,

  one inert inside the other.

  He brings darkness with him, sure,

  but also glittering things.

  In the sun, he looks like a crumb

  from the deepest cave, and if the clouds sink low,

  his shiny black head is a star, brighter and brighter.

  Sleep never comes to this creature.

  He closes his disc eyes and yearns for rest.

  Seasons spin in their sockets,

  winter falls off its shelf with a whoop,

  the mouse of the field goes home.

  And yet, all down the road,

  dutiful fenceposts yawn a little,

  strangely restless in their shallow beds.

  My Travels

  He has run away,

  so I must apprehend him,

  though I know it will take forever.

  I sleep naked under bridges.

  In the morning I put on my pillow of clothes.

  Once, I think I see him hanged in a tree,

  but it is a woman instead,

  shoulders swelling from her rotten uniform.

  I step forward and take her fallen hat.

  Sparrows rise from fields,

  convulse in the dry road and fly off,

  dust memorizing each little shrug.

  Sparrows scrounge in my hair

  for small, useful things.

  At night, I hear him walking,

  the clink of leg irons through ditch water.

  Stars gaze down at me where I lie

  in the fog, clutching the coins he drops,

  his bottles and leather pouches,

  his ruined glass eye.

  The heavens see through my lies,

  through the coat and decayed shirt,

  to all his gorgeous cuts and bites.

  Little birds cry out, bolt to the river

  and settle on any floating body

  to watch the moon spin round.

  Rain

  All day it rains and the trees bend low

  over the river.

  Floating like light bulbs in the murky water

  are all my various children.

  They have been out all night

  in long white nightgowns.

  I reach to where the smaller ones

  spin in the shallows.

  I tell myself they are cute,

  but, in truth, they are all imbeciles:

  reckless, missing fingers, missing eyes,

  bit by horses, bit by snakes and gone wild on venom,

  fans of blood.

  The baby closest to me

  thinks he’s playing songs from the old country

  on a reed. The rain drools down his cheeks.

  “Wait a minute,” I say. “That reed’s not hollow,”

  and I wade toward him,

  sinking deeper, my arms above me in worship.

  He keeps on piping till I am gone.

  After a while, the rest of them join in.

  Surveyor

  You can have faith in small things, nowadays.

  Everything speaks of renaissance.

  There are rules, and the boy follows them.

  Take Mass without confession.

  Mistrust those who wash.

  Sleep inside.

  A surveyor of average height

  can pace the metres off, but the boy must leap,

  hat bobbing over long grass.

  Lightning ruminates over the plains and

  buffalo kneel and taste the little coloured boundary stakes.

  The land is irrigable or not,

  owned or not, French or Indian or home.

  The surveyors shout to him, the boy paces,

  and land goes away with him.

  Before sleep, he prays and prays

  while things fall apart in his hands.

  He pretends his mother is alive.

  In his dreams, a one-armed girl steps forward

  leading a horse that jerks its head.

  A brightness and a rapture shoots out,

  lightning stirring unobstructed dark,

  and the boy awakes, gasping,

  and clutches his white nightshirt.

  Stranger

  The stranger bathes at the end of his quest.

  Those who peek th
rough the door

  think maybe they remember his boots.

  “Wash it again, little milkmaid,” he murmurs,

  and the children run screaming.

  I point to the place in the book where this happens.

  See? The dirt he’s washing off is from the grave.

  There is general nodding

  and more people come up to look.

  A sour-smelling woman with

  a milk bucket slips into the room with him

  and vanishes in the steam.

  There’s squeaking in the tub,

  louder and louder,

  like someone trying to play “Am I Blue?”

  The city fathers are paralysed,

  no one dares move.

  Except me.

  I’ve already stolen his boots, his hair-piece,

  and half the hotel bar.

  I’m far down the muddy boardwalk, clicking his heels.

  In the cage I’m carrying

  the canary has finished going mad.

  It stands panting in its own damp mess.

  Flower

  The mountie is whining,

  rifle in his good hand, nightshirt on.

  His boots are burned black.

  What he objects to are all these damned women,

  tailored and astride splendid horses.

  Torment comes every morning.

  Doves moan in the eaves, children drown

  in rain barrels,

  but this young man doesn’t care.

  Dogs all over town could hop in rabid agony

  and he would not shoot them.

  He just wants these women to go home

  so he can get some sleep.

  The youngest one hands him the usual

  shrivelled flower,

  and his knees crumple under him.

  Every morning the same thing,

  a pale hand reaching down to him,

  the shivering flank of her horse,

  and the mountie, the boy,

  sleeping on the way down,

  peering inside himself.

  Black Wing

  We watch a bootless boy

  pass the cornfield, uniform wet from the river,

  hat swinging in his hand

  as if still marching.