xxxxxxxxxx‘And doom is luminous today’

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx“Physicists have broken through; some are dismayed to find
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxThe new air they inhabit
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxThey share with poets.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxGovernments (who?) can misconstrue
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx…” (107)¹

Not Faust nor Fludd need be surprised: engines
of transmutation shudderingly overwhelmed
by angry seas; salt sprouting by tonnes
(a fortune in their day)
where engineers are sending sea
to bandage sea’s damage; sand
in gears. xxxxAlchymists’ dreams
had long lay dormant, but now the heartbroken
Polish governess has left for Paris and
physicists have broken through; some are dismayed to find

a zircon staring back at them from
rapidly shallowing
depths, riding a yellowish green
horse; Scheherazade
riding a seahorse,
her gaudy paste ring inhibits
for now the yellowish
green doom below
and keeps sweet, for a bit,
the new air they inhabit.

Forty quiet years
these engineers posted Thor’s hammer
down copper wires
to light God’s darkness,
warm winter,
bubble pots
at suppertime, their jinn a glaze
scraped from German crockery
that’s brimming with hot gravy and grits
they share with poets

who, like everyone else,
have to eat, breath, drink
something. Spokesmen
are so transparent
gamma rays
can see right through
their arguments – Communications,
that gleaming
industry torturing words so
governments (who?) can misconstrue.

==========================

[1]: from “Apocalyptics”, by Margaret Avison; in Always Now: Collected Poems Volume One (2003), pp. 105-8; but originally in Winter Sun (1960). The title quotes the last line of “Apocalyptic?” (http://preview.tinyurl.com/5wqje4o goes to the Google Books preview, which has both poems), the immediately preceding work in the ’03 Collected. Construction of yet another annoying Canadian-style glosa from lines 9-13 of this is left as an exercise for the student – e.g. if or when Brian offers ENGL 3381 again at St. Mary’s.

Related Posts

No related posts.