Jonathan Locke Hart
Some Voices in, though, from and out of Canada
A Brief Note by Jonathan Locke Hart
In memory of Milan V. Dimić
Canadian literature has changed. In one sense, the oral literature of
Canada began with the stories that Natives told before Canada as a
nation existed. But it was also the stories of the Vikings who reached
the New World, and then much later, those of the English and French
and the many others groups who landed here.
The Natives, Acadians, Maritimers and New Englanders know
well that the borders of nations are artificial. But borders come, and
must be some reason for them. When we ask about what defines a
Canadian writer, we see how borders become porous. Some Can-
adian writers who were born here left, some have passed through,
and some only had ancestors who lived in Canada. Wyndham Lewis,
Malcolm Lowry, Saul Bellow, Jack Kerouac, Elizabeth Bishop, Mark
Strand all fall into this field of vision. Others, like Robert Finch, P. K.
Page E. D. Blodgett, Dionne Brand, and Tom King, who are import-
ant figures in Canadian literature, were born elsewhere.
Although French and English are the official languages of Cana-
da, it has always been multilingual on the ground. The original lan-
guages are Native or indigenous languages. English and French are
newcomers after the Norse languages and along with Basque and
other languages, including the African and Asian languages that
early inhabitants brought. So Canada and Canadian culture and
literature become richer and more intricate with each new wave of
inhabitants who settle or pass through.
The original works collected here represent in a small way the
variety of voices Canada has to offer. We are fortunate to have E. D.
Blodgett lead off this selection of Canadian poetry and literature
with beautiful apostrophes. Next are the intricate “Calindromes” of
Călin Andrei Mihăilescu. Naomi McIlwraith’s powerful poems that
blend Cree and English bring a socially conscious voice to the table.
The delicate poems of Pushpa Raj Acharya that follow move between
Canada and Nepal. My own poems are followed by the accomplished
translations into French by Nicole Mallet of my sonnets. Two rich
and lovely poems by Monique Tschofen round off this collection. The
work will speak for itself and much more eloquently than I could
about it. These writers are accomplished, and I was fortunate to have
them join me in this selection. They have lived in various regions
of Canada, and were born here or come from the United States, Ro-
mania and Nepal. Canadian literature is free and changing: it is not
a matter of policing or control. It is a free state of mind that people
contribute to here and afar, then and now, in a future that will change
and, I hope, be creative, welcoming and magnanimous (excuse the
personification). What I have enclosed here is a celebration of diver-
sity with the hope for further celebrations. In the future I hope to
bring more French into the conversation. Circumstances did not
allow me to do so this time.
E. D. Blodgett
Fountain
At dusk it takes you by surprise, a turn into a garden that
you have never seen, and under trees the sound of rain that falls
slowly, playing against the leaves and touching water, rain but not
rain, a simple fountain giving droplets of water to the air,
the hovering trees, a pool at its feet where water echoes on the stone.
Everything seems to rest here, resting in the still fall
of water, an atom that contains a certain music, you, the stone
surrounding silence—time that seems to turn upon itself. You would
not dare to take a step for fear of altering the rhythms that
play upon the unknown world where you have strayed unable to
depart. Death is not noticed here, unless it is in inside the hollow
echo of the stones, of absence, sadness, a bird in darkness calling,
the notes barely heard and falling through your mind as any small
rain might fall, the traces that it leaves invisible but sure.
Frieze
It was a season cut from glass, of cautious birds, evening that
pauses in patches in the trees as if composed of memories
barely visible, and each fallen from a labyrinth
of stories to linger briefly here before the rising of the stars.
You see the thinness of it, its fragility, your eyes unsure
if all of it, the birds and stars, might have been spoken of in spells,
of spells adrift from larger tales and all unable to depart,
a season that has no way out and open in us like a frieze
where we begin to see ourselves in low relief, so delicate
that you might think that you are leaves of willows that have just begun
to give their softest green to air, and if a goddess were to be
needed, then this green were she, etched beside us in the air,
a melody of birds woven soundlessly into her hair,
all of us the merest echoes of a script without trace.
Moonlight
Voices of children playing in the street rise up and float into
the window where you sit, the beauty of it seizing you as if
someone gripped your throat, your one desire to lift them in your arms,
embracing them forever, not the little bodies, which will grow old
soon enough, but just the voices, as elusive as a wild
stream that in the spring begins to stumble over rocks, and then
you think your heart will break, and unresisting that is what it does,
the fragments of it floating through the window and away from you
beyond your grasp, despite the empty gestures of your hands, appeals
of the mind in silence, mingling with the voices of the children,
silence, ostinatos they might hear perhaps to dance against,
among them yours and mine perhaps, a certain sadness that pervades
the light of afternoon, all that one desires most a gift
of bodies, bodies that shed their evanescence, a moonlight given up.
Pool
The night my father died, the stars emerged and gave the sky its shape,
moving slowly from east to west until horizons took them and
they disappeared, the silence of their passage falling over all
of us as if it were a passing of an early snow that drifts
but briefly through the dark. If we spoke, it was in passing, an
opening of silence, a little spring that surfaced from the ground
and fell away, the grass around it bending momentarily
toward the water never seen before. If that is what you were,
moving in the briefest of springs and passing on as water does,
your silence must have been the silence of a stream invisible
whose passage lies beneath the ground, rising beyond sight to form
a pool and then depart, a pool where frogs rise up and sing throughout
the night, as if they were the bearers of a message that cannot
be known, but passed alone between themselves and the reflected stars.
Weeping
Weeping is a music that is composed of oboes and the fine
rain that falls on distant hills, muted but with echoes of
poplar leaves that hold it briefly before giving it up, the sound
departure makes, unable to resist, an eternity
of going away that enters everything that hears it–seasons, chairs,
the moon–and standing in an old house, there’s no running from
its rising from the walls, its dust invisible that settles on
your flesh without your feeling it. Weeping is a music that
exhales, coming over one as autumn mist that rises in
a valley, trees becoming ghosts, the ripple of the stream absorbed
but heard as weeping’s only rhythm, breath the soul of weeping’s cry,
the music that it makes drawn in, its waxing and its waning a
giving and a taking of the world, the stars that were so far
now brushing against our skin as if their sky had always been just there.
Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu
Anonymous is none of us
Anonymous
is none of us
though we lose name
where we don’t lose face
in the bed sheets
where we don’t lose curves
through straits and gardens of oranges
through and through
the litany
the thaumaturgy
the exhaustion
of limbs playing snakes to each other
each drop time gained and
pushed from mouth
to mouth like stars a pearl an Edelweiss
anonymous
is none of us
***
Don’t shout, dad, I can’t hear you
I can hear only whispers
the princess said in a badly translated Arabic
but given how many got crucified in Hollywood
why should she get special treats?
or my ears, voracious like the crocks?
Or the exerchist making fun of wars’ blood?
I am the pharmacy, your Highness
I came to ask for you daughter’s whisper
Pactriotism
It’s done: you don’t remember what
grand-grandpa ate or loved or saw
so you can’t think thoughts of the past
– it would be ghostly ghastly, meek –
instead you take the syringe there
a bunch of them to quick-inject
you own into the cemetery,
then dig them up, eyebrows high up,
and warn the kids that if the touch
the banner on the hill, will grow
the boner in the ground, the cause
of which you are the haughty effect
your innate ghost return to grandpa’s not
the fatherland’s the solitude of many
against the loneliness of each,
fracking for symmetry man eats another
showman while women birth amok
Naomi McIlwraith
A Sonnet for the Pimp and Liquor Lord
I’ll bet you think this stupid little song
can’t grapple with your sterling stainless crimes:
your girls, your gods, your guns, your drugs, your throngs
of money-grubbing fat cats with their chimes
and chings that ring out profits, assets, bombs.
Your liquor stores, your liquid love so fine
it souses babies’ brains. You do them wrong,
these wounded humans ruined by your cheapjack wine.
And yet, you are a friendly enemy—
you live with us, you eat with us, you sleep
with us. A stealthy kind of enmity
you practice, as you dispense your wares and keep
this killing that you make while tot’s impaired.
This reservoir of pain? There’s no repair.
Healing Circle
Sober, you hold the talking feather
as you speak. The Elder calls it
kihêw mîkwan and with a tremor
you rise with the eagle as you
embrace us with your wings of heartbreak.
Your story in this circle hurts
you to relive it as you tell it.
Your story in this circle hurts
me to see you relive it.
But you soar with the eagle
as you give us your story
you give us your pain
you give us your tears.
Your mom sits beside you, her arm
on your young but manly shoulder as your knees shake
and your tears come with the words. You have
a daughter you say before passing
the talking feather to your mom.
When she holds the kihêw mîkwan
and speaks, your hand on her shoulder
comforts her as she tells us what happened to her
while carrying you for nine months.
Your tears over your daughter,
your mom’s hand on your shoulder,
and now your hand on her shoulder show me
finally, finally
about inter-generational trauma.
When my sweaty palm clutches
the kihêw mîkwan much later
after all the others, it shouldn’t
hurt me to tell you I didn’t
know about the wreckage of alcohol
until I was nearly an adult.
It shouldn’t hurt me to tell you
my two parents didn’t need
liquor in their home. It shouldn’t
hurt me to tell you I remember
four grandparents who loved me.
It shouldn’t hurt me to open
my wings to tell you.
But it does.
And in the tears and the telling
and the hearing, this circle wounds.
But in the tears and the telling
and the hearing, this circle heals.
You’ll Never Turn from Her Humanity
All I can see is the insanity.
Despite the bile and boil and frequent squalls,
you’ve never turned from her humanity.
Her ship, it pitches with profanity;
she’s prey to colonizer’s liquored gall.
His screech the source of the insanity.
Along with chaos came calamity:
malevolent excess of ethanol
that floods the hull of her humanity.
Perhaps her shame became the vanity
that lists with intoxicants to appall.
All I can see is the insanity.
Distiller’s swill still charts her destiny;
her predators, we hear them caterwaul.
You never turn from her humanity.
No anchor and no cure, adrift at sea:
prenatal exposure to alcohol.
Though all I see is the insanity,
you’ll never turn from her humanity.
Pushpa Raj Acharya
Grandparents’ Home
A lemon tree
in the garden
the scent of green
and yellow, mixed
with the dewdrops
in the dawn brea
Joy
In a dream last night,
I jumped into a great green lake
I discovered
it was a lake inside a lake inside a lake inside a lake…
where I found:
a wolf’s skin
a flute player
a white horse
a red canvas
and the memories
of my grandmother
engraved on stones
Peach Blossoms
We did not see the peach blossoms together
In the High Park
where the Spring clouds wrapped the sun
you watched them bloom
I stopped by the library at St. George Street, at midnight
when the moon dropped
on the canopy of the flowers
Frozen
between pink and white
we are standing
still
and watching
the peach blossoms split pain
into time and joy
Good News
On a branch of a tree
sits a little sparrow.
As time tumbles down from past
rolls up from future
and turns into present
a twig quivers
under the bird’s feet.
Jonathan Locke Hart
Three poems selected from the sequence, “The Swimmer”
1.
She left in a grove
And shone with oil
She drank from the stream
And sang in the breeze
And, pausing, looked
Back to see what eyes
Might look from the green
Of the trees. She walked
Ahead, and in the sun
She felt unseen heat
A gaze unnoticed, a taste
On her tongue, her feet
Almost like vines
Rooted in the earth
And she began, dying
To breathe, to feel
The air sucked from her,
And in the thrill
She reeled, and panted
As she began to run
Until the sun hid
And she slipped
Like a sliver
Into the moonlit sea.
2.
The sea was blue
The sea was dark
The lake was near
Her words were clear
Her words were stark
They struck his ear
And fell away. The spark
On the flint stuttered in the rain
And left a burn that left its mark.
The river drains
The river pushes out
While she complains
To the wind and sea
That his tongue has come unstrung
And the hills are not what they used to be.
3.
Her toes played in the sand
The sea washed her feet
With seaweed like hair
And her tongue hung
In the wind. The sand
Stuck to her wet skin
And the salt sat on her lip
And the sea snuck to her lap
As the sun fell on her hair
Like a waterfall. And from
The shore, she heard him call
And the light shimmered on the sails
And fell back again on her face.
Invisible hands held
What she could not say
And all day the waves came
And played with her, and sand
And wind took her up.
Rêveries
Deux Poèmes de Jonathan Locke Hart traduits par Nicole Mallet
1.
Les rameaux gisaient flétris par-delà la colline,
Le village niché creux du vallon, invisible
Comme ta main ce soir-là, la lune,
Reflet de cette éclipse, le taillis
Et la charmille cachés au bout du sentier, c’est alors
Que ta chair, rosée comme la prune,
Capta le soleil à son déclin, le jardin
En fleurs, alors que, la pénombre venant, le verger se taisait
Et que la quête de la nuit nous enveloppait
Presque le vieillard reste sans voix
Quand remontent ses sentiments, même comme un regain
Suranné, la moisson presque finie.
La moelle frémit et frissonne longtemps après le temps
Où le sang jeune palpite au vent d’avril.
26.
La teinte turquoise de l’eau n’est pas une illusion de carte postale.
La libération de la mer dans la lumière qui se meurt
N’est pas une supputation de poète. Ici, les vents
Peuvent être chauds en janvier. Aucune sirène ne s’élève
Des récifs: les bateaux sont alignés
Dans la baie comme s’il n’y avait jamais de tempête.
L’amour dans la moelle, peu importe que
Le terme soit gênant, se manifeste
Dans la chaleur et la lumière, les os et le vaisseau,
S’enfle et descend au premier et au dernier rayon de lumière.
Plus je vieillis, moins je sais. Tu as
Gravi, mon fils, une autre falaise.
Les marchands grecs et phéniciens connaissaient maints signes
De l’amour; ce n’est pas que la chaleur du sang.
Monique Tschofen
Epithalamium
Along such paths we have followed you, circling through
clamorous cities, to watch your voices, saffron and lavender,
opening together slowly, like dusk. It was always summertime
at the High Level, Brooklyn, and Minto Bridges, the air
shining with the pieces of you your lives knotted before us,
and I remember even on cold nights, underneath the cicadian buzz
of streetlights, snowflakes framed your faces with
garlands of petals. Your love–such a gentle reaching
for the sweet–has grown resplendent. As a garden leans
loud and lovely with bee-balm, beauty berry, and heart leaf
towards the madrigal call of the sun, so too do you, moving
together towards sky and wind, reverberate in joy, for what is love,
but a gift of sound to air? Say the words now–you love–
and we understand that the world’s fullness is not touched,
but held, as a river’s water is held, without being hushed,
as a kiss is held, in the breath, birthed with each syllable, sigh,
laugh, lament. Say you love again; sing it out da capo.
From the beginning, thought wants only to be named. Your lips touch,
each word as substantial as the movement of something moving
so sweetly, we break ourselves into hearing just to see.
Siren
I will feel my feathers fall,
my hard scales slough.
We’ll crawl together to the sea.
Roddy Lumsden, “My Descent”
I am finding it hard to write; you, still
in that other city with your aged dog,
are busy reading. That’s all I know.
Someone else’s words
pass your lips, their octopus shapes dance
in your mouth, while your urchin tongue
swells to drink in more brackish juice.
Otters watch you sink, reckless, into
currents, trembling with the kelp and eelgrass,
until the reefs read back the braille
of your bones through the parchment
of your golden skin.
You need only sing out, alone and tall;
I will feel my feathers fall.
I miss your voice. I would have tried to call,
but you said not after six; anyway, my heart
swarms with crickets, and my hands
are clenched in fists. What could I say?
That dry and wordless, I still reach for you
in the dark? That some remembrance
of your mouth’s mollusc dirge sweeps
from my mind the very names of things?
Nothing grows here and I haven’t rained
in years. No, this thing with you cannot be good.
You’re awash in a story many miles away,
while, mineral, I now stand exposed,
silent as a prairie bluff.
Sing out to me: my hard scales slough.
You’ll take the whole world up
and swallow it hard, flotsam and debris,
till those foamy words seed more fabular wrecks.
I forget all else. Your eyes’ blue depths unraveled me.
Come, sing; all I need is for you to breathe.
We’ll crawl together to the sea.