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Given Names: New and Selected Poems, 1972-1985
127 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
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January 21, 2022
hello hello I am alone
the sky is streaked with orange and blue
yes there is warmth
the sun shines down
children laugh in the streets
hello hello there is happiness here
old ladies grin over tea
palm trees spread their green wide leaves
wheat bends in fields
laughter reaches the sky
and hello hello the sky is grey
children fight and call each other names
leaves baked brown wheat cut down
old ladies disappear
hello is anybody there
* * *
I love your consecration
your sacramental slant
the way you blessed my skin
I couldn't miss
the delicious surrender to pleasure
the thirteen stations so oblique
and understated;
my love's underrated
for you, being unique,
a kind of ship-wrecked treasure
in an under-water kiss
where the smoulder should begin
out nerve ends resonant
in champion blue hesitation
I love your consecration
in champion blue hesitation
your sacramental slant
our nerve ends resonant
the way you blessed my skin
where the smoulder should begin
I couldn't miss
in an under-wave kiss
the delicious surrender to pleasure
a kind of ship-wrecked treasure
the thirteen stations so oblique
for you, being unique,
and understated;
my love's underrated
* * *
you told her
you would leave her
something to sew;
she looked the house
over and found
only an empty shirt
with no holes in it
she looked the house
in the eye
and tried
her own alchemy
on alterations, she took
the shirt and cut it
open, found nothing
but seams and thread
wanting to please you
wanting always
to do the things
you requested,
she cut the shirt open
with your scissors
she made a gash
in its breast pocket
deep enough
to include your heart
and stitched it
with your thread, a series
of blanket stitches
around the blank space
of your heart pocket
* * *
if you can read this
you are too close
to the action
beyond the page
an optical allusion
the lost and found
of sight and sound
* * *
it is still today pause
and my heart is still in flux stop
with your constant magic
perpetual enough
understanding makes it impossible
not even in this second
before you take in
the next line stop
distance colours breathing
forget facts exclaiming mark
live in the listening fiction
* * *
in response to your request, your response
is slow, is reverberative and inchoate
is deviant, is no longer audible
in the inner ear where porcelain shatters
to its own fissures along heartlines
regarding the ear. electronic and
magnificent, deficient where it amounts
to rhythm, regarding the regards
forget the regrets, results of response
dyslexia: a disturbance of the ability
to read
what?
we read with our ears; the voice hears
and translates grammatical congruency
forget the regrets, overwhelming sorry
that's another story
when reading with ears, do visuals
become somnambulant
do ambulances get visualized
do what?
the right ear monitors monitors,
the minotaur gets lost in the equilibrium,
the hammer too loud,
it's the eustacian?
eustacian,
the tube where you's station
ain't quite typical, aural,
and then you audio-listen in.
* * *
All Saints' Day
Marriage between Marjorie Mary
(from Brockville)
and Douglas Damnation
(from Ireland)
annulled,
cancelled,
declared invalid.
Damnation in the photograph,
heading for Korea, returning or
smiling
Dear saint wedding photograph
somewhere in the memory, but destroyed
in the aftermath. Marriage
overgrown from the back seat
of a Ford in February.
First inarticulate conception
snowbound:
A daughter,
conceived in snow,
received in snow.
* * *
heresy
you say
hearsay
I say
here there
hear there
heresy
see hear
see here
hearsay
you say
heresy
heretic
come quick
you say
daresay
heresy
you say
hearsay
I say
* * *
Gone the thrust towards being
human, not becoming.
Not becoming, not pretty,
at all.
Nothing.
Not mattering.
Unravel, undo, unconditional
in this poem off to the left, absence
in the punctured words,
the pictureless picture of things.
Nothing matters,
any more. Any less
to nothing. Surrendered
words instill grief.
Nothing performs,
takes its place
in the order, out of the order
of things.
This helpless
river of white
runs into language
by force;
tell me nothing matters
and teach me grief.
* * *
Here, the villain lives below
zero, thrives in the winter
of angles and sparks
"Don't forget your g'loshes,"
she said then, over and over,
almost too many years to be sure.
But remembering, chanting,
one galosh, two galoshes,
three galoshi, four.
Protection. Small relics
without much magic now, without
much at all.
Impossible to reach into
a closet and find those simple
answers to winter.
Or looking out this wide window
to discover how long it takes
for snow to accumulate in silence.
To understand the finality
of ice, the brazen coldness,
the glacial whore.
Winter tighten its claws
in my heart; I turn to the sidewalk
where pedestrians stand frozen.
Forgotten. That compassionate landscape,
heart shape where we bloomed
in the clamour of love.
the sky is streaked with orange and blue
yes there is warmth
the sun shines down
children laugh in the streets
hello hello there is happiness here
old ladies grin over tea
palm trees spread their green wide leaves
wheat bends in fields
laughter reaches the sky
and hello hello the sky is grey
children fight and call each other names
leaves baked brown wheat cut down
old ladies disappear
hello is anybody there
- Hello, for James Blake, pg. 11
* * *
I love your consecration
your sacramental slant
the way you blessed my skin
I couldn't miss
the delicious surrender to pleasure
the thirteen stations so oblique
and understated;
my love's underrated
for you, being unique,
a kind of ship-wrecked treasure
in an under-water kiss
where the smoulder should begin
out nerve ends resonant
in champion blue hesitation
I love your consecration
in champion blue hesitation
your sacramental slant
our nerve ends resonant
the way you blessed my skin
where the smoulder should begin
I couldn't miss
in an under-wave kiss
the delicious surrender to pleasure
a kind of ship-wrecked treasure
the thirteen stations so oblique
for you, being unique,
and understated;
my love's underrated
- Holy Water, for Victor Coleman, pg. 30
* * *
you told her
you would leave her
something to sew;
she looked the house
over and found
only an empty shirt
with no holes in it
she looked the house
in the eye
and tried
her own alchemy
on alterations, she took
the shirt and cut it
open, found nothing
but seams and thread
wanting to please you
wanting always
to do the things
you requested,
she cut the shirt open
with your scissors
she made a gash
in its breast pocket
deep enough
to include your heart
and stitched it
with your thread, a series
of blanket stitches
around the blank space
of your heart pocket
- Sewing, for Elizabeth Smart, pg. 31
* * *
if you can read this
you are too close
to the action
beyond the page
an optical allusion
the lost and found
of sight and sound
- For Raphael Bendahan, pg. 49
* * *
it is still today pause
and my heart is still in flux stop
with your constant magic
perpetual enough
understanding makes it impossible
not even in this second
before you take in
the next line stop
distance colours breathing
forget facts exclaiming mark
live in the listening fiction
- touch of zygosis (optimum), pg. 58
* * *
in response to your request, your response
is slow, is reverberative and inchoate
is deviant, is no longer audible
in the inner ear where porcelain shatters
to its own fissures along heartlines
regarding the ear. electronic and
magnificent, deficient where it amounts
to rhythm, regarding the regards
forget the regrets, results of response
dyslexia: a disturbance of the ability
to read
what?
we read with our ears; the voice hears
and translates grammatical congruency
forget the regrets, overwhelming sorry
that's another story
when reading with ears, do visuals
become somnambulant
do ambulances get visualized
do what?
the right ear monitors monitors,
the minotaur gets lost in the equilibrium,
the hammer too loud,
it's the eustacian?
eustacian,
the tube where you's station
ain't quite typical, aural,
and then you audio-listen in.
- Dyslexia, for Larry Scanlan, pg. 68-69
* * *
All Saints' Day
Marriage between Marjorie Mary
(from Brockville)
and Douglas Damnation
(from Ireland)
annulled,
cancelled,
declared invalid.
Damnation in the photograph,
heading for Korea, returning or
smiling
Dear saint wedding photograph
somewhere in the memory, but destroyed
in the aftermath. Marriage
overgrown from the back seat
of a Ford in February.
First inarticulate conception
snowbound:
A daughter,
conceived in snow,
received in snow.
- Past Cards, pg. 70
* * *
heresy
you say
hearsay
I say
here there
hear there
heresy
see hear
see here
hearsay
you say
heresy
heretic
come quick
you say
daresay
heresy
you say
hearsay
I say
- The Syntax of Things, 2, for Daphne Marlatt, pg. 90
* * *
Gone the thrust towards being
human, not becoming.
Not becoming, not pretty,
at all.
Nothing.
Not mattering.
Unravel, undo, unconditional
in this poem off to the left, absence
in the punctured words,
the pictureless picture of things.
Nothing matters,
any more. Any less
to nothing. Surrendered
words instill grief.
Nothing performs,
takes its place
in the order, out of the order
of things.
This helpless
river of white
runs into language
by force;
tell me nothing matters
and teach me grief.
- Given Names, 2, for Rosemary Sullivan, pg. 98-99
* * *
Here, the villain lives below
zero, thrives in the winter
of angles and sparks
"Don't forget your g'loshes,"
she said then, over and over,
almost too many years to be sure.
But remembering, chanting,
one galosh, two galoshes,
three galoshi, four.
Protection. Small relics
without much magic now, without
much at all.
Impossible to reach into
a closet and find those simple
answers to winter.
Or looking out this wide window
to discover how long it takes
for snow to accumulate in silence.
To understand the finality
of ice, the brazen coldness,
the glacial whore.
Winter tighten its claws
in my heart; I turn to the sidewalk
where pedestrians stand frozen.
Forgotten. That compassionate landscape,
heart shape where we bloomed
in the clamour of love.
- Nuclear Winter, for David McFadden, pg. 102-103
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