August. Reading
From lamplight on a glossy page
my eyes lift: now not
insects’ footprints along
gleamy paper, but a
wash of diluted, cold
green tea with
dust-bunny clouds afloat
southward, grape-tinted once but
fast fading. A
last lick of
ivory light tinctures
a tall, very far over,
wall.
POLITICAL PLOY PERHAPS
Is
Humpty Dumpty a
was?
His all-apartity
awash
in royal horses?
(as likely to squash
that goggle-eyed face
in the grass as
to reass-
emble a torso from as
many bits as hash)?
Perhaps poor Humpty had
to tumble so we’d see
all the pieces we need
to make democracy.
A Word about the Poem by Margaret Avison
Three strands came together suddenly to release this poem: remembering Iona and Peter Opies’ disclosure, probably in The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren, of a political dimension in nursery rhymes; recalling an illustration of Humpty Dumpty in a child’s book, his pudginess and protruding eyes, which merged with newspaper photographs of public figures; the feel in the fingers of the name “Humpty Dumpty,” wood carved in an irregularly rounded shape.
In a poem, the physical feel of a word-counter matters more than its meaning (in this instance, some significant person’s “fall” from power after perceived indecisiveness, i.e. “sat on a wall”).
All Fools' Eve
From rooming-house to rooming-house
The toasted evening spells
City to hayrick, warming and bewildering
A million motes. From gilded tiers,
Balconies, and sombre rows,
Women see gopher-hawks, and rolling flaxen hills;
Smell a lost childhood's homely supper.
Men lean with folded newspapers,
Touched by a mushroom and root-cellar
Coolness. The wind flows,
Ruffles, unquickens. Crumbling ash
Leaves the west chill. The Sticks-&-Stones, this City,
Lies funeral bare.
Over its gaping arches stares
That haunt, the mirror mineral.
In cribs, or propped at plastic tablecloths,
Children are roundeyed, caught by a cold magic,
Fading of glory. In their dim
Cement-floored garden the zoo monkeys shiver.
Doors slam. Lights snap, restore
The night's right prose.
Gradually
All but the lovers' ghostly windows close.
