Ghost of sorrow
There is a ghost of sorrow who lives in my heart.
It wakes; it keeps me awake;
it squeezes against my chest.
Sometimes it leaks from my eyes when I am driving
as if lured by a ribbon of song or Continue reading Ghost of sorrow
Tag: memory
Not sailing to Byzantium: on poetry in a time of crisis
No one sleeps the night through anymore. The wings of endings beat near our faces, drop bones into our dreams….But let us understand that we too will die, each of us; and that in our time of living it matters to reach out and to speak up against the increasing number of state gestures that threaten to become excessive force, surveillance and foreclosures of civil liberties. It matters to ask questions, and to try to conduct serious civil debate about the best routes to sound judgment and care. It matters to take time to listen to what the non-human parts of the planet are saying, as dolphins roll through Venice, and the air clears over Delhi and other industrial centres. It matters to reimagine our entitlements and travel plans, our airplanes and global expansions. What does a sustainable economy look like? Whom should it serve? What would it take to build it, and to engage both human and non-human actors? Why shouldn’t artists and poets study such things? Continue reading Not sailing to Byzantium: on poetry in a time of crisis
“All land is sacred:” Another kind of remembrance
These are the things I want to remember this Remembrance Day: everything that is alive that impresses itself on my senses, not the celebratory stories of European wars and muscular bravery, the pomp and pride that says “Look what we did; this land is our land; war is sacrifice is glory.” What terrible stewards and guests we colonials have been and go on being; even when we think we’re at peace we wage war on other beings, wrecking and murdering, fissuring the earth and all of its resources in the name of conquest, ownership, profit and, ironically, “survival”–a survival that is ever more clearly on its way to choking us all. Our noisy honking drowns out the very voices to which we need to listen. Truly I do not want to study war anymore, neither on this day nor any other; its racket, its glorious tales of the seizure of territories, is not where we most need to hone what Toni Morrison, in Beloved, called our “rememories,” or remembrance of memories right now. Continue reading “All land is sacred:” Another kind of remembrance
Running out into the rain: Remembering Bill Readings (1960-1994)
It has been twenty-five years since my friend Bill Readings died in an iced-up airplane that plummeted to earth in an Indiana soybean field. Twenty-five years since a phone call that Halloween night cancelled dinner plans, and turned our Montreal party into mourning. Twenty-five years since the world changed. Continue reading Running out into the rain: Remembering Bill Readings (1960-1994)
You who would see the wind (prose poems)
Psst, are you there? I don’t think I’m alone here—that’s what the philosophers say anyway. Here’s what I see: flickering shadows on blank walls of the afternoon, the sound of leaves rustling in the wind. Continue reading You who would see the wind (prose poems)
How the ghosts of memory lie
A place that resembles a place where once I lived: Google Street View of 3 rue de la Fointaine au Roi, Paris I have almost forgotten my neighbour already. Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge, 171. Some years before he died, my friend Elisabeth’s father began to lose his memory. He became concerned to organize his memorabilia, and so he set … Continue reading How the ghosts of memory lie
Journey’s End
Journey’s End, or Reflections as one thing passes into another Sunday, August 27, 2017 Sky passes into sea, Rose Harbour, Kunghit Island, Gwaii Hanaas 4:30 am Atlantic Daylight Savings Time Sunday 27 August, 2017 West Quoddy, Nova Scotia Just a week ago we were in British Columbia, preparing for our last day on the boat for the year. We’d moved into the launch slip, for … Continue reading Journey’s End
Visible Poetry 