you talk of art - joan murray

You talk of art, of work, of books.
Have you ever sat down, thought all that's to do?
That book to read, that book to write,
Sat down, stood up, walked back and forth,
Because not an action you could do would
Fill the gap that's wanting action to the chin?

Look. Look into the past one damned moment,
And on that you ask me to work, to dream, to do?
Try it yourself on nothing. I can't.

Every confounded one has had so much of life
that left them gasping in a stinking or a lighter air,
Left out of breath and glad to think at last,
Higher or lower, their there and there to there.

And where am I? Where I began, and where I'll end:
Sitting, sitting, with the last grain of will
Rotting in time, and there's no time or tide in me.

You talk of art, of work, of books.
I'll talk of nothing in its lowest state,
Talk till my jaw hangs limply at the joint,
And the talk that's one big yawn in the face of all of you,
Empty as head, empty as mood, and weak.
And I can hear all the watery wells of desolation
Lapping a numbing sleep with in the head.

Murray, Joan. "You Talk of Art" Modern Canadian Poets. Jones, Evan and Todd Swift, eds. Manchester: Carcanet Press Limited, 2010. 74.

artisan and clerk - a. f. moritz

Like ghosts leaving their bodies those factories
were leaving us. Their black hulks were lying here,
complex and empty -- but we heard that they

were in fact still living, elsewhere. Their souls
had flown to a heaven called Brazil and there
had new bodies, glorious, in a new world.

The cages and vented fires there, we heard, the power
of the renovated hammering, the titanic outputs,
the inexhaustible eternity of the materials

and the labour of that world were beyond our imagination,
and the way those mills shone beside plunging rivers
fresher and wider than our oceans here,

the way they stood in the shade of primitive trees and eyes.
And we were shaken by a further rumour: of a flaw
in the world, in being itself, and even deeper --

a flaw in salvation. It was said that those ghosts,
even beatified, were eating heaven -- that despite
infinity, they would soon consume it all,

have nothing left, and start on their own bodies.
Was this, then, what awaited us? Not likely. We
were condemned. They sat us down with the manual that said,

'If you are seeking work for fifty hours each week,
then seek for one hundred. Forget sleep. Work
at having no work harder than you ever worked at work:

then you will find work faster and when you find it
you will have learned how to work. Remember,
all who seek will find, and so, think what it means

that you are still seeking. Remember, there's work for all,
but unless you try harder than the others 
they will get it and there will be none for you.

Take their work. It will teach them to work better.
You will have what you desire, so think what it means
that you are unemployed and want to die and do not dare.'

I remember that when I wrote this manual we were happy.
It was a difficult, long-drawn-out job,
what with the committee, the management, the board,

and even the shareholders demanding to approve each word,
and in total agreement fighting over the drafts,
differences without distinction, hoping to compose

by mindless opposition something perfectly insipid and bold.
Months, years went by, I was paid well
for my work to be erased, and when we could

we huddled together in the depths of the house.
We had and raised our child, we fought and cried,
watched the birds in the garden at the seed

the manual paid for, though they were free in the wild
to take their glory elsewhere
and find what seed they would.

Then it was all over, the warring factions
were satisfied, the self-help manual
for the unemployed was finished and so was I.

And now that, to help me, they put it in my hand,
I have to contemplate the perfection of my work --
no future book can equal its inescapable clarity --

and its uselessness -- neither I nor anyone
will ever find work again. Our child, for instance:
when we were employed we trained him at dire expense

with the greatest artists, and he had already created
his famous series of workers,changed into light and money,
circulating through the elongated no place

of fibre optics. But now he draws graffiti on walls,
dodging the police, for who can afford canvas?
Or he breaks windows, scrapes stones over marbles facades,

writes manifestos on stolen fast food paper napkins,
identifying himself with the subtle, relentless
markings and destructions of the wind and rain:

for no one is going to buy him any other press
and lithographic stone, no bank is going to invite him
to carve the divine history with all

its demonic grotesques on the new cathedral's door.

Moritz, A. F. "Artisan and Clerk" Modern Canadian Poets. Jones, Evan and Todd Swift, eds. Manchester: Carcanet Press Limited, 2010. 155-7.

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.