"The Dead Poet" by Al Purdy

 

16 November 2010

I was altered in the placenta
by the dead brother before me
who built a place in the womb
knowing I was coming:
he wrote words on the walls of flesh
painting a woman inside a woman
whispering a faint lullaby
that sings in my blind heart still

The others were lumberjacks
backwoods wrestlers and farmers
their women were meek and mild
nothing of them survives
but an image inside an image
of a cookstove and the kettle boiling
— how else explain myself to myself
where does the song come from?

Now on my wanderings:
at the Alhambra's lyric dazzle
where the Moors built stone poems
a wan white face peering out
— and the shadow in Plato's cave
remembers the small dead one
— at Samarkand in pale blue light
the words came slowly from him
— I recall the music of blood
on the Street of the Silversmiths

Sleep softly spirit of earth
as the days and nights join hands
when everything becomes one thing
wait softly brother
but do not expect it to happen
that great whoop announcing resurrection
expect only a small whisper
of birds nesting and green things growing
and a brief saying of them
and know where the words came from

"The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot

 

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy
With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more
Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty
That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early

The ship was the pride of the American side
Coming back from some mill in Wisconsin
As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most
With a crew and good captain well seasoned
Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms
When they left fully loaded for Cleveland
And later that night when the ship's bell rang
Could it be the north wind they'd been feelin'?

The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound
And a wave broke over the railing
And every man knew, as the captain did too
T'was the witch of November come stealin'
The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait
When the gales of November came slashin'
When afternoon came it was freezin' rain
In the face of a hurricane west wind

When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck sayin'
"Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya"
At seven PM, a main hatchway caved in, he said
"Fellas, it's been good to know ya"
The captain wired in he had water comin' in
And the good ship and crew was in peril
And later that night when his lights went outta sight
Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Does any one know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searchers all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay
If they'd put fifteen more miles behind her
They might have split up or they might have capsized
They may have broke deep and took water
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
In the rooms of her ice-water mansion
Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams
The islands and bays are for sportsmen
And farther below Lake Ontario
Takes in what Lake Erie can send her
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
With the gales of November remembered

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed
In the maritime sailors' cathedral
The church bell chimed 'til it rang twenty-nine times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee
Superior, they said, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early

Note: I think of the late Gordon Lightfoot as a poet, as a poet who was nation building, similar to Al Purdy. This is one of the great songs of Canada and is beautifully written. Gordon Lightfoot, born November 17, 1938, died May 1, 2023)

R.G. Everson's "Everson at Eighty"

R.G. (Ron) Everson was a prominent poet back in the 1950s and 60s, he is also one the founders of the League of Canadian Poets. Like many of the older generation of poets you don't hear much about Everson today. I just read Everson at Eighty (Oberon Press, 1983) which also has an introduction by his friend Al Purdy. Purdy is supposed to have edited this selected poems, but it's a bit confusing if he really did and there are parts of his introduction that are also confusing; for instance, he writes of going on a trip to Newfoundland with the Eversons but also present on this trip was Purdy's wife and her husband, but the husband he is referring to might in fact be Purdy himself, referred to in the third person, or it might be some other man who is married to Purdy's "wife". It just doesn't make sense. Thirty-five years after it was published, Everson at Eighty is still worth reading.

As an aside, in the early 1970s I heard Al Purdy read his work at Loyola College (now the Loyola Campus of Concordia University) and after the reading, in the faculty lounge, I met Everson who had been talking with his friend Al Purdy. Poetry was a small world in the old days but that small world was populated with a pretty talented group of poets.

1983