essay on adam - robert bringhurst

There are five possibilities. One: Adam fell.
Two: he was pushed. Three: he jumped. Four:
he only looked over the edge, and one look silenced him.
Five: nothing worth mentioning happened to Adam.

The first, that he fell, is too simple. The fourth,
fear, we have tried and found useless. The fifth,
nothing happened is dull. The choice is between:
he jumped or he was pushed. And the difference between these

is only an issue of whether the demons
work from the inside or from the outside
in: the one
theological question.

Bringhurst, Robert. "Essay on Adam" Modern Canadian Poets. Jones, Evan and Todd Swift, eds. Manchester: Carcanet Press Limited, 2010. 141.

we travel like other people - mahmoud darwish

We travel like other people, but we return to nowhere. As if travelling
Is the way of the clouds. We have buried our loved ones in the darkness of the clouds, between the roots of the trees.
And we said to our wives: go on giving birth to people like us for hundreds of years so we can complete this journey
To the hour of a country, to a metre of the impossible.
We travel in the carriages of the psalms, sleep in the tent of the prophets and come out of the speech of the gypsies.
We measure space with a hoopoe's beak or sing to while away the distance and cleanse the light of the moon.
Your path is long so dream of seven women to bear this long path
On your shoulders. Shake for them palm trees so as to know their names and who'll be the mother of the boy of Galilee.
We have a country of words. Speak speak so I can put my road on the stone of a stone.
We have a country of words. Speak speak so we may know the end of this travel.

Translated from the Arabic by Abdulah al-Udhari

Darwish, Mahmoud. "We Travel Like Other People" Scanning the Century: The Penguin Book of the Twentieth Century in Poetry. Peter Forbes, Ed. London: Penguin Books, 1999. 359.

the christian's year in miniature - margaret avison

I

Beside the still waters,
infant-pure,
God is, in flesh.
Now the skies soar

with song. Heaven utters.
In a white blur
lost, in a rush
caught up, we hear.

II

To the hills we lifted
our eyes, and you
sat on the pasture ridge
strongly in view,

and taught us. The breeze wafted
your voice through and through
our hearts. From the timeless verge
you moved, to our now.

III

Unsullied one, though midnight
is lucid to your heart,
here, in God's unspeaking
you are set apart.

Where kings brought gold by starlight
at first, now I have marred
your clarity, breaking
my clayful - to your hurt.

IV

A walnut shell broken
(small, wafered skull)
still litters the hillside.
Morning breaks, still.

The garden, awaking
to a terrible day-swell
knows the rock-sweet, the pulse set
of Emmanuel.

V

Your places of dwelling
held up for our own
together, if we fashion
your now with soon

fill us with spoiling
of the deaths we had won.
Only in your possession
can such Life go on.

Avison, Margaret. "The Christian's Year in Miniature" Modern Canadian Poets. Jones, Evan and Todd Swift, eds. Manchester: Carcanet Press Limited, 2010. 83-4.

song - joanne weber

My hair once oiled your feet.
You, not I, knew what it meant.

Now you gather me, small and white,
freshly wakened from my sleep.

Please stay.
You are a tent over me,
a canopy of swallows,
and I will quickly embroider
in gold thread,
their resting and mating.

The swallows are startled into flight.
You gather me.
Now we cover the sky.

Weber, Joanne. "Song" Fast Forward: New Saskachewan Poets. Klar, Barbara and Paul Wilson, eds. Saskatoon: Hagios Press, 2007. 89.

cain's legacy - richard jackson

You can't stop the boxcars of despair.
You can't stop my voice from hiding out
like a virus inside your words, their knives
clamped between your teeth. You can't stop
the dogs gnawing on the bones from mass graves.
Thus your mirrors holding other faces. Thus your lungs
filled with someone else's words.
The eyelids of the heart closing. The sky drunk
on vapor trails. Otherwise, a few packages of conscience
to the refugees. You can't stop the sounds
of exploding stars as they approach you.
The anxious triggers. The land mines of idealism.
You can't stop Dismay from stumbling
out of the trenches of your dreams.
You can't stop these ghosts sitting around your table
gnawing on the past. Their candles burn down
to shimmering wounds in their cups.
Everyone holding their favorite flags like napkins.
The sound of bugles spilling from the room like laughter.
I know, you kill what you love just to hate yourself
all the more. You put on the cloak of distance.
A wind that blows away the weeks. The lovers' wilted embrace
that was your only, last hope.
Everyone his own Judas. After a while
even the moon is just an excuse not to look too closely.
You can't stop the past boiling up in the heart like lava.
Otherwise, a history written by shadows.
For example, someone says the universe is expanding,
more anxious optimism, but where would it expand into?
There's only the vacuum that's always inside us.
There's Stephen Hawking saying the past is pear shaped
but that doesn't feed anyone. You can't stop the brain
of the starving child turning into a peach pit,
not his body terrorizing itself for food,
not his face wrinkling like the orange you leave on your table,
his liver collapsing, the last few muscles snug
over his bones like the tight leather gloves of your debutante.
Otherwise your old lies yawning to wake in the corner.
You can't stop the pieces of the suicide bomber
from splattering all over the cafe walls.
You can't stop the walls the tanks crush from rising again.
Otherwise a few tired rivers, a few fugitive stars.
The seasons that ignore us. The cicadas giving up on us.
Hope's broken antennas. Love trying to slip out of the noose.
The betrayed lives we were meant to live.
You can't stop that town from turning its soul on a spit,
not the light chiseling away desire, the morning
wandering dazed through the underbrush of deception.
You can't stop these sails of tomorrow hanging limp
from their masts. All you have are these backwaters of touch,
this voice spinning like a broken compass,
this muzzle made from your own laws.
But you can't stop the bodies piling up.
You can't stop the deafening roar of the sky.
You can't stop the bullet you've aimed at your own head.

Jackson, Richard. "Cain's Legacy" The Pushcart Book of Poetry. Murray, Joan, ed. New York: Pushcart Press, 2006. 579-80.