by Dennis Lee
way and they drank all year, or went strange, or they sat and stared outside
as their cars settled back to slag and now what
races toward us on asphalt across the Shield —
by truck, by TV minds and the ore-bearing flatcars —
is torn from the land and the mute oblivion of
all those fruitless lives, it no longer
stays for us, immemorial adversary, but is shipped and
divvied abroad though wrested whole from the Shield.
Take Tom Thomson, painter; he
did his work in the Shield.
Could guide with a blindfold on. Was part of the bush. Often when night
came down in a subtle rush and the scorched scrub still
ached for miles from the fires he paddled direct through
the palpable dark, hearing only the push and
drip of the blade for hours and then very suddenly the radiance of the
renewed land broke over his canvas. So. It was his
job. But no two moments land with the same sideswipe
and Thomson, for all his savvy, is very damp and
trundled by submarine currents, pecked by the fish out
somewhere cold in the Shield and the far loons percolate
high in November and he is not painting their cry.
Small things ignite us, and the quirky particulars
flare on all sides.
A cluster of birches, in moonlight;
a jack pine, gnarled and
focussing heaven and earth —
these might fend off void.
Or under the poolside arches the sunlight, skidding on paper destroyers,
kindles a dazzle, skewing the sense. Like that. Any
combination of men and time can start the momentary
ignition. If only it were enough.
But it is two thousand years since Christ’s carcass rose in a glory,
and now the shiny ascent is not for us, Thomson is
done and we cannot
malinger among the bygone acts of grace. For
many are called but none are chosen now, we are the evidence
for downward momentum, although despite our longing still restrained
within the real, as Thomson’s body really did
decay and vying to praise him we
bicker about which grave the carcass fills.
New silences occur in the drone of the square’s great spaces.
The light overbalances, shadows
appear, the people walk away.
But massy and knotted and still the Archer continues its space,
which violates our lives, and reminds us, and has no mercy upon us.
For a people which lays its whiskey and violent machines
on a land that is primal, and native, which takes that land in greedy
innocence but will not live it, which is not claimed by its own
and sells that land off even before it has owned it,
traducing the immemorial pacts of men and earth, free and
beyond them, exempt by miracle from the fate of the race —
that people will botch its cities, its greatest squares
will scoff at its money and stature, and prising wide
a civil space to live in, by the grace of its own invention it will
fill that space with the artifacts of death.
On Queen Street, therefore, in Long Branch, wherever the
people have come upon it, say that the
news is as bad as we thought:
we have spent the bankroll; here, in this place,
it is time to honour the void.
4
Among the things which
hesitate to be, is void our
vocation? The houses on the street
hold back from us, across the welter of city blocks
our friendships keep stalling,
even the square falls away and the acts of our statesmen
will not come real though we long for it.
Dwelling among the
bruised and infinitely binding world
are we not meant to
relinquish it all, to begin at last
the one abundant psalm of letting be?
If only it
held. If only
here and now were not fastened so
deep in the flesh and goodbye, but how should a man
alive and tied to the wreckage that surrounds him,
the poisoned air goodbye, goodbye the lakes,
the earth and precious habitat of species,
goodbye the grainy sense of place, worn down in
words and the local ways of peoples, goodbye the children returning
as strangers to their roots and generations,
and cities dying of concrete, city goodbye my city of passionate bickering
neighbourhoods the corner stores
all ghosts among the high-rise, like bewildered nations after their
surrender as their boundaries
diminish to formalities on maps goodbye, so many
lives gone down the drain in the service of empire,
bombing its demon opponents though they bleed like men, goodbye
and not that all things die but that they die meanly, and
goodbye the lull of the sun in the square, goodbye and
goodbye the magisterial life of the mind, in the domination of number every
excellent workaday thing all spirited
men and women ceaselessly jammed at their breaking
points goodbye who have such little time on earth and constantly fastened
how should a man stop caring?
And yet the death of lakes, the gutting of our self-respect,
even the passage of Canada —
these do not intrude such radical
bereavement merely to
humour us, to bid us declare
how painfully each passing brings us down.
Every thing we own will
disappear; nothing
belongs to us, and
only that nothing is home.
And this is what the things were telling us: if we can
face the rigours of detachment, meaning our
life, our job, our home, permitting it to
break over us, letting it
bring us down till every
itch and twitch of attachment loses its purchase,
at the dead-end of desire and for some it will last
a month and for some ten years, at last we
find ourselves in the midst of what abounds,
though that is not it but now we are set
free to cherish the world which has been stripped away by stages, and with no
reason the things are renewed: the people, Toronto, the elms
still greening in their blighted silhouettes — some
dead some burgeoning but none our property, and now they
move at last in the clearness of open space, within the
emptiness they move very cleanly in the vehement enjoyment of their bodies.
But what good is that in a nation of
losers and quislings? and for the few tenacious
citizens of a land that was never their own, watching the
ore and the oil and the shore-lines gutted
for dollars by men from abroad, watching Canadians
peddle their birthright and for these others, good
stateless men and women and may they go down in civil fury —
how should they clutch and fumble after beatitude, crouching for
years till emptiness renews an elm-tree,
and meanwhile the country is gone?
I think much now of Garneau, master of emptiness,
who in the crowded streets of Montreal
saw not lost souls but a company of lost bodies, and
moving into himself gave thanks when he discovered
not
hing but desert and void.
And I know that appetite in my own life,
at work, at home, in the square, and more insistent every day it presses
outward through the living will of the body,
straining to reach its ground, oblivion.
But some face exile at home and sniping at corporations,
manic at times, and the patsies of empire their leaders lying for votes
till the impotence spreads in their veins, there is
shame abounding and sometimes a few good
gestures between the asphalt and sky that might have been adequate
once, and finally dying on occupied soil.
Yet still they take the world full force on their nerve ends, leaving the
bloody impress of their bodies face forward in time and I believe
they will not go under until they have taken the measure of empire.
5
It would be better maybe if we could stop loving the children
and their delicate brawls, pelting across the square in tandem, deking
from cover to cover in raucous celebration and they are never
winded, bemusing us with the rites of our own
gone childhood; if only they stopped
mattering, the children, it might be possible, now
while the square lies stunned by noon.
What is real is fitful, and always the beautiful footholds
crumble the moment I set my mind aside, though the world does recur.
Better, I think, to avoid the scandal of being — the headlong particulars
which as they lose their animal purchase
cease to endorse us, though the ignominious hankering
goes on; this awakens the ache of being, and the lonesome ego
sets out once again dragging its lethal desires across the world,
which does not regard them.
Perhaps we should
bless what doesn’t attach us, though I do not know
where we are to find nourishment.
So, in the square, it is a
blessed humdrum; the kids climb over the Archer, and
the pool reflects the sky, and the people passing by,
who doze, and gently from above the visible pollutants descend,
coating the towers’ sheath. Sometimes it
works but once in summer looking up I saw the noxious cloud suspended
taut above the city, clenched, as now everywhere it is the
imperial way of life that bestows its fallout. And it did not
stay inert, but across the fabled horizon of Bay Street they came riding,
the liberators, the deputies of Jesus, the Marines, and had released
bacterial missiles over the Golden Horseshoe for love of all mankind,
and I saw my people streaming after calling welcome for the small change,
and I ran in my mind crying humiliation upon the country, as now I do also
for it is
hard to stay at the centre when you’re losing it one more time,
although the pool
reflects the placid sky, and the people passing by, and daily
our acquiescence presses down on us from above and we have no room to be.
It is the children’s fault as they swarm for we cannot stop caring.
In a bad time, people, from an outpost of empire I write
bewildered, though on about living. It is to set down a nation’s
failure of nerve; I mean complicity, which is signified by the
gaseous stain above us. For a man who
fries the skin of kids with burning jelly is a
criminal. Even though he loves children he is a criminal. Even though his
money pumps your oil he is criminal, and though his programs infest the air
you breathe he is
criminal and though his honest quislings run your
government he is criminal and though you do not love his enemies he is
criminal and though you lose your job on his say-so he is criminal and
though your country will founder without him he is criminal and though he has
transformed the categories of your refusal by the pressure of his media he
is a criminal.
And the consenting citizens of a minor and docile colony
are cogs in a useful tool, though in no way
necessary and scarcely
criminal at all and their leaders are
honourable men, as for example Paul Martin.
In Germany, the civic square in many little towns is
hallowed for people. Laid out just so, with
flowers and fountains and during the war you could come and
relax for an hour, catch a parade or just
get away from the interminable racket of the trains, clattering through the
outskirts with their lousy expendable cargo.
Little cafes often, fronting the square. Beer and a chance to relax.
And except for the children it’s peaceful here
too, under the sun’s warm sedation.
The humiliations of imperial necessity
are an old story, though it does not
improve in the telling and no man
believes it of himself.
Why bring up genocide? Why bring up
acquiescence, profiteering? Why bring up, again,
the deft emasculation of a country by the Liberal party of Canada?
It was not Mr Martin who sprayed the poison mist
on the fields of the Vietnamese, not in person nor fried civilians — he was
no worse a man than the other sellouts of history:
the Britons who went over to the legionaries, sadly for the sake of the
larger peace,
the tired professors of Freiburg, Berlin, the statesmen at Munich, those
estimable men, and the lovers of peace, the brisk switchers who
told it in Budapest. Doesn’t the
service of quiet diplomacy require dirty hands?
(Does the sun in summer pour its warm light into the square
for us to ignore?) And then if it doesn’t work one is finally
on the winning side — though that is
unkind: Mr Martin was an honourable man, as we are all
Canadians and honourable men.
And this is void, to participate in an
abomination larger than yourself. It is to fashion
other men’s napalm and know it, to be a
Canadian safe in the square and watch the children dance and
dance and smell the lissome burning
bodies to be born in
old necessity to breathe polluted air and
come of age in Canada with lies and vertical on earth no man has drawn a
breath that was not lethal to some brother it is
yank and gook and hogtown linked in
guilty genesis it is the sorry mortal
sellout burning kids by proxy acquiescent
still though still denying it is merely to be human.
6
I am one for whom the world is constantly proving too much —
not this nor that, but the continental drift to barbarian
normalcy frightens me, I am constantly
stiffening before my other foot touches the ground and numb in my
stance I hear the country pouring on past me gladly on all sides,
towed and protesting but pelting very fast downhill,
and though I do not decry technopolis I can see only the bread and circuses
to come,
and no man will use a mirror to shave, in case he
glimpse himself and abroad there will come obscenity, a senseless procession
of holy wars
and we will carry the napalm for our side, proud of our clean hands.
I can’t converse with friends without discussing Rome, this is
/> bad news and though the upshot is not that I am constantly
riddled with agonies my thing is often worse for I cannot get purchase on life.
7
Among the flaws that mar my sleep I harbour more than wars for I have
friends and lacerations,
brave men and spritely women, lovers of Dylan
whose fears dovetail and though often our gentleness for our lover
is straight and incomparable,
we impose the roles that feed the other’s
hankering and go on to
savage what we have made, defacing
images, our own, and thus finally
destroy the beloved
trapped inside the image.
And the nerve-ends come apart and we spend
long nights separate in the same bed, turning and raunchy as if
our dreams were real for there are
few among us who are competent at being, and few who can
let our lovers be.
And some are freed by the breakdown but many at once will
lapse back into the game, projecting our
monstrous images back outside us again, where we will
deface them again and again destroy the beloved,
and there is never any end to it while we are alive.
And some move through these hard necessities
like losers for awhile, but then they
reach some kind of ease in their bodies’ loving;
the agony hunger fades, they come to a
difficult rhythm together, around
their job and the kids, that allows for a
tentative joy and often for grieving together.
But mostly each man carries his lover’s fate
inside him, which he fears as it stirs because if the drinks are strong
or the conversation proceeds just so it will rise up and contemptuously
destroy him, and at last when he meets the other
with his own fate trapped like a bubble inside her body
there is a baleful chemistry which draws them together for love and the kill.
And out of that horror of life
they take on the crippled roles that each has singled the
other to partner, the voluntary betrayal is
consummated and they are confirmed again
in postures of willing defeat and furious at their own fresh self-abolition
they tear strips off the other who has been their accessory.
And they walk all night in the street for the fate is still in them,
