Poems

Dulcinea

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Dulcinea

 Men of La Mancha

Insubstantial dream
extracted from a madman’s mind,
who dares to magic her back to this world?

Who could want what with her now?
She exists nowhere.
Can you conjure her up from mists?

Once she was Echo: her voice
dependent on a mad rogue’s tongue.

Moonlight through the glade.
White foam atop the sea.
Betrayal of every dream
once she is found.

For he who creeps into her bed
finds plain Aldonza there.
The enticing breasts that made him drool
are shrunken dugs when seen up close.

Her horse is but a donkey
and she herself is but a dream
woven from the fabric of another’s whim.

Begone.
Allow Dulcinea her well-earned rest.
Take care lest she roll over and start to snore:
Dulcinea turned Aldonza ever more.

Sancho Panza

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San Chopanza

 Men of La Mancha

“How much did you say?
Is it in writing?
Let me see the words.
Better, since I cannot read,
let me taste the gold.

You have not brought it?
Just this paper signifying cash?
And promises? Promises
I can trust because you’re known
to keep your word?

Thank God I cannot write.
I will not make my mark.
Men like you I met
when I governed my island,
and I chased them from my realm.

Owners of hollow staffs,
muscular women
strong in the arm and weak
in defense of their honor.
Do you, sir, take me for a fool?

When you awake the man,
beware the grown-up’s fist.
Do you know who I am?
Have you read my history
that tours the world in print?

 Read it, sir, and know me
for who and what I really am.
And the next time that we meet,
if you would drive a bargain,
bring gold, good food, and wine.”

Don Quixote

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Donkey Hotay

 Men of La Mancha

Saddle his steed
and let him ride
uphill and down.

The world is wide
enough for a knight
and his faithful squire
to find at road’s end
what they most desire.

Let him obey his vow.
Let him best portray how
a true knight,
worthy of the name,
guards from shame
his knightly honor
and his beloved’s fame.

Let no mage
despoil that Golden Age.

Onward, ever onward,
to glory and renown,
and let him once again

tilt at windmills and knock
falsehoods down.

Desaparecidos

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Desaparecidos

Last year, in Fredericton Mall,
a mother lost her little girl.
They found her in the women’s washroom
where two old ladies were cutting off her hair
and dressing her in a young boy’s clothes.

Wanted in Winnipeg.
Vanished in Vancouver.
Cheap alliterations in tabloid headlines
disfigure each tragedy.

Sometimes we think we recognize their faces.
This young girl with an old woman’s body
standing at a Yorkville window.
That other girl on Yonge Street
selling her body for drugs.
That flash of underage flesh
mounted by strangers
and glimpsed in a pirate video.

Do you call for call girls when you travel?
That midnight knock on your hotel door
is someone’s missing daughter.
You saw her once before on an airport advert
or on the carton of milk you opened
for your family’s breakfast.

What traveling salesman would you trust
to take your only daughter’s body and treat it well
while she promised him the sexiest time
he would ever have?

But in Goya’s Spain
it’s the males who disappear
usually during the night.

Most times, their families never see them again.
Sometimes, as in this etching,
their bodies are found, nailed to a tree
or dumped in a side street with the garbage.

Bacchants

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Bacchants
after
Velásquez

Go down to Queen Street
on a summer evening,
or walk to Odell Park
and look in the dark
beneath the trees:

you’ll find them
gathered round a fire,
drinking meths or after-shave.

Fly Karsh from Ottawa.
Lodge him in the Beaverbrook
then bribe these Bacchants with free
booze and bring them to him.

One day their photos will hang
with those of Hatfield or Robichaud
in the New Brunswick Hall of Fame.

That’s what Velásquez did
when he painted his dwarfs
and topers, and you can see them
in the Prado today,
as famous as
Spain’s King and Queen.

Mad Dog Wind

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Mad Dog Wind
Barcelona

from
Last Year in Paradise
(1979)

It rushes through the city,
loses itself in hotel lobbies,
comes out to snatch and snuffle
at the empty hands of children.

It hustles leaves,
leaves paper-trails
of flighty pigeons
flapping, indignant,
across the square.

Delayed by doors,
it snorts at windows,
shudders
tight-closed shutters,
rages at rooftops,

chases
a ragged herd of clouds
around the sky
high above the Ramblas.

¡Olé!

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¡Olé!

The vaquilla charges the picador, bravely,
receiving her wound, then returning for more.
¡Olé!

Braveness in the stance, the head erect,
eyes open, watching the teenage torero,
suit of lights sparkling, sequined sequences,
feet dancing, cape held low, the vaquilla
on train tracks, gliding past.

¡Olé! ¡Olé!

The vaquilla charges at shadows,
plays her role in this meta-
theatre of cape and sword.
But it’s only make believe.
The vaquilla pauses at centre stage,
flanks heaving heavily, baffled, mocked.

¡Olé!

The farmer leaps the barricade, grabs her tail,
tugs her to the ground, stands on her neck,
and shears her horns.
The maiden, mocked and marked,
escapes through the gate:
the scent of the fresh blood flowing
arouses the waiting herd.

¡Olé! ¡Olé!

Pilgrim

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Pilgrim

Santiago de Compostela

She drew me out from inner darkness,
told me to rise and walk.
“But first,” she said, “your wounds.”

She washed them in laughter,
dried them with her smile.

I left that night
walking west beneath the stars
to where the red sun
dips beneath the horizon.
South I wended my way,
where winds are warmer.

Hope flowered anew each day.
Dew on the morning grass
gifted both food and water.
Birdsong raised its morning voice
to the creator and her creation.

Sunlight flooded my body.
It flowed out through my heart,
a beacon to light my way.

At night, when star song
brightened the owl’s path,
I saw my road
stretched high above me.

Pilgrim through once barren lands,
the light she lit for me
burns within me still.

 Rain, sleet, snow, ice, fire:
they’re all the same.
No lion shall me fright.
I’ll with a giant fight.

“Constant,” she said to me.
“Come wind, come weather.”

Christopher Columbus

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Christopher Columbus

leaves foot prints,
wake to his imagined ships,
dark, in the snow,
the unusual snow,
the snow they haven’t seen
in Granada city centre
for forty years.

It settles on roofs,
forms dark ridges
where the sun catches it
and turns it into
wet, dripping snow.

The Alhambra:
a wonderland of stiff,
white starched buildings,
stands out against
the mountain’s mass.

We click our cameras
and say “Just like home!”

We don’t realize
we’re repeating history
for it snowed then,
as it snows now
and Columbus
walked these streets
like any Canadian tourist,

short of breath,
short of cash,
the seams of his boots
letting in the cold,
wet snow,
you know how it is
on Yonge Street,
Main Street,
any street,
any town
in Canada.

And then the miracle:
he’s walking away,
leaving it all behind,
when the messenger
catches up to him and says:

“The war’s over:
there’s money now.
She says ‘Go for it!’
The ships you want,
the dream, the world,
they’re all yours now.”

Christopher Columbus
fell on his back,
flapped his arms,
and created winged shapes:
dream-angels,

white-sailed ships
sailing in the snow.

El Cristo de Carrizo

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El Cristo de Carrizo

For Tanya Cliff

“Contemplate this crucifixion.

Each time you sin
you plant a fresh
thorn in your savior’s
crown.

Each misdemeanor
spears the sacred side
or hammers a nail
in hand or foot.

Christ lives in you.
your daily misdeeds
nail him daily to the cross
he bears for you.

No death, for him,
no resurrection:
just an everlasting hanging
from these nails you daily drive.”