Poem on St. Laurent
Nothing to compare with my own suffering
searching the night out like a spinster
for the devil's own wine,
a willow's breeze chained softly to a gallows' moon.
The smell of diesel and small enough lies
vendetta and slurred speech,
crowd the parkway.
With the devil we commune, human enough
though we will die like savages.
Every word is a golden calf
tarnished silver
because we make it that way.
The long cantos of restaurateurs and cartoon versifiers
a poem in the style of our prickled youth,
the egg timer and hourglass exchanging glances.
Magic and rhythmless mind,
one yielding the other.
And you will find beauty in the hands of the betrayed,
of those whose flight has produced safety.
In the meantime you ask Homer for advice,
the legends for guidance,
and expect nothing but boulevard prayer.
Cote des Neiges, that little pharmacy
where you will find out that she is pregnant
and beg the stars with your love for her,
die a little by time.
Slay its dragon tongue,
that you may live
and she endure the leviathan,
the lilac paths
that will soon be orphaned by spring.
Eight long years and you are still beside me
though sacks of hay and forget-me-nots
litter the room.
You are already a long journey
and though we never agreed on Flaubert
or the Elizabethans
we did just now make love on the kitchen floor,
and earnestly have we argued over the Brontes and Emile Nelligan,
the paperback riders of literature
and the necromancy of old Artaud and Verlaine,
who in great conflagration
lost the world.
And I dream my dream
blithely now,
half-awake and dying
that I by your side
have been one of them my love
though the world will stand idly by
and attest to no pardon but its own.
And only a parson's grave-side marker
might set the gavel.
You have been my friend
and I love you dearly.
I tell you this
because love is more than a promise.
The distance is yearning
and this is half the known sky.
What will be left at the long end of the day
when the parody for forgiving is lost
and all that I have
is a thousand pages of night,
struggling with the wasteland
and the mongoose of literature.
It has been a year of gradual promises
and misunderstanding.
A pastel symphony of unended colours
and fallen leaves.
All the great loves have run amok
on dry knolls,
misbegotten dreams,
their heads smitten
against the largesse of the world.
As if by chance
a sudden wind interned,
like some grey cathedral wall
standing between us
and all we have known
to be prayer.