Two poems by Kenneth Patchen

 

A Vision for the People of America

O the poets with death on their tongues
shall come to address you.

The fat nonsense will end.
You will drown in your rot.


The poets with death on their tongues
shall come to address you.


The slimy hypocrisy will end.
You will go down in your filth.


O the poets with death on their tongues
shall come to address you.

O Fiery River

O fiery river
Flow out over the land
Men have destroyed the roads of wonder,
And their cities squat like black toads

In the orchards of life.
Nothing is clean, or real, or as a girl,
Naked to love, or to be a man with.
The arts of this American land
Stink in the air of mountains;
What has made these men sick rats
That they find out every cheap hole?

How can these squeak of greatness?
Push your drugstore-culture into the sewer
With the rest of your creation.
The bell wasn't meant to toll for you.
Keep your filthy little hands off it.

O fiery river
Spread over this American land.
Drown out the falsity, the smug contempt
For what does not pay . . .
What would you pay Christ to die again?

Note: Both poems are from Kenneth Patchen's Selected Poems, published by New Directions.

Hi Bob, Yes, I am back out walking

Yes, I am back out walking, I aim for a daily walk, it is my favourite exercise. Here we are again at the corner of Cote St. Luc Road and Robert Burns Avenue, a property that continues to deteriorate. I suppose whoever owns this property is waiting for a buyer, or demolition and building permits, or architectural plans. In the meantime we have a building in which the electricity has been cut off and with the changing seasons the whole thing is in a state of decline and deterioration. Last week I saw a hawk sitting on one of the railings in the photograph below. Nature is returning to the Covid cities we inhabit. But nothing stands for long in the way of making money so these buildings must not only go, new buildings (condos, most likely) will be built here. 

 

The illusion of progress and Vincelli`s Garden Centre in late July 2021

If I remember correctly, in Brave New World Revisited, Aldous Huxley writes that the main problem for the world is overpopulation. So many of the world's problems can be traced back to there being too many people; people are everywhere and they're destroying the planet with garbage, pollution, climate change, building houses on farm land, forest forests, destroying rivers, and causing the extinction of thousands of species of wild life. We are destroying the world with our own species. People are everywhere and it's not a pretty sight. 

I suppose there will be a resolution of this problem of overpopulation as more women are educated, there is a relationship between women's education and the number of children they have; women with careers generally have fewer children. As people become more affluent they have fewer children. This seems the only solution to overpopulation. As well, although the world has almost eight billion people we haven't had an increase in the number of gifted people, we don't have dozens of Newtons or Einsteins, nor do we have a few hundred Leonardos or Michaelangelos, or fifty Shakespeares cranking out works of genius. We are destroying ourselves as we proliferate; what will be left of the natural world by 2100? Will it be like J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World? That seems one possible scenario...

There have been some extreme visions of a post-apocalyptic world; after the apocalypse the population is reduced, mankind is almost extinct. Yesterday, when I walked by Vincelli's Garden Centre, I was reminded of an old television show about what happens to civilization without people; for instance, they might show New York City and then, through computerized special effects, they show New York City in ten years, twenty years, and further off into a future without people. The asphalt streets are cracked and overgrown with weeds, windows are broken, buildings are beginning to collapse, the city is abandoned and overgrown with vegetation. It doesn't take long for coyotes and wolves to be walking along Fifth Avenue and the Empire State Building to collapse. Look at Chernobyl where, in 1986, there was a nuclear disaster, today wild life has returned, the place is overgrown with lush vegetation, and animal life has returned despite high levels of radiation. Tourists are visiting Chernobyl to see how a city that was once full of people going to work, spending time with their families, and enjoying life, has become a ghost city. It took just thirty-five years for nature to reclaim the abandoned city of Chernobyl but it won't be safe for permanent human habitation for many years, possibly for centuries. 

More of anything does not necessarily increase the value of that thing, it might even diminish its value. It has been said before that we are not as moved by the suffering of a million people as we are by the suffering of one person, for instance a child's dead body on a beach. More of a thing seems to diminish its value, and one recalls the photographs of Spenser Tunick in which he invites hundreds of people to pose naked, standing or lying down on a city street. I always found these photographs disturbing, the pink naked bodies remind me of the dead naked bodies of Nazi victims, bodies thrown into mass graves before being covered with dirt. It is all highly disturbing. I don't like Tunick's photographs but I can still recognize their message; his photographs remind us that too many human beings in one place has not made the human race more attractive, it has made it something less attractive, more vulnerable, more expendable. I would add that overpopulation is dangerous to the long-term survival of humanity.  

These photographs of Vincelli's Garden Centre taken in late July 2021,

Vincelli's Garden Centre a month after closing for good.

When I used to visit Vincelli's Garden Centre I never thought it would end up like this . . .

 

The illusion of progress and Vincelli`s Garden Centre in late August 2021

Every time I drive passed the former Vincelli`s Garden Centre I expect to see the place leveled and construction of almost three hundred condos begun. When I was young I was always looking for some nature in the city, an empty lot, the lanes in our NDG neighbourhood, the Villa Maria orchards, or riding our bikes along Norman Street and the empty fields there and then continuing on to Dorval Shopping Centre. That is all finished, Norman Street is all construction-trucking-delivery firms, the highway to the shopping centre is now many lanes wide and people drive like devils on it, no place for some kid on his bicycle. This is change, it isn`t progress. Being in nature, even an empty lot in the city, is good for children; every empty lot having a new condo built on it isn`t progress, it`s become uncontrolled development. I think by now we have seen through the illusion of progress, except perhaps in medical science; most progress is change for its own sake. And usually there is the profit motive in this, not that there is anything wrong with people making money--improving their family`s fortune, owning a nice home, improving themselves--but there are always consequences to what people do, and making money for its own sake can become greed. An empty lot, some country-like environment, is good for children, they can escape the relentless presence of modern life which is getting relentlessly omnipresent, it is also bad for our children`s health, and diminishes any vision or spiritual inclination that children may have been born with. Seeing Canada geese flying overhead, Monarch butterflies in the garden, honey bees, earth worms, urban wild life, imagination and creativity, dreams and day dreams, solitude, playing with other children, this is a connection with nature and getting in touch with something greater than ourselves, even with the divine spark in each of us. But the current housing boom is upon us, houses that families could afford just five years ago are now double the price to buy them and are being bought up by banks, foreigners, and entrepreneurs out to renovate and flip the property for profit. So, some children are being deprived of both using their imagination and a decent and safe place in which to live. These condos that will be constructed on the old Vincelli`s Garden Centre site won`t be cheap and they won`t be four bedroom condos for families, they will be built to maximize profit, probably one or two bedrooms for old people who are downsizing from their family home. It is not a positive future ahead of us as we get deeper into this century, some of us see it as dystopian. 

These photographs of Vincelli's Garden Centre taken in late August 2021,

Return to the Village Shopping Plaza

I often walk by the Village Shopping Plaza on Cote St-Luc Road, it has grown more and more derelict; next door is the now closed Robert Burns Pub. Here are photos taken about a week ago.

 

This will be demolished for more condos

I'm not saying that this building (it's the Village Shopping Plaza located on the corner of Robert Burns and Cote St-Luc Road), and another in front of it, are now or ever were attractive but there was a restaurant here and other businesses, plus offices on the upper floors (not visible here). People worked here, socialized here, bought stuff and sold stuff, had clothes made here, had their hair done here, bought food here, had a daycare here, sold antiques here, had a life here. You can't keep every building; out with the old and in with the new. But had this building been maintained it would still be a viable part of our community. But the land is worth more than what the present building was bringing in. There is also an empty lot for sale across the street (Westover and Robert Burns) from the Terrasse Robert Burns Restaurant that is also for sale. The empty lot, like this building, has a Hydro Electric pylon running across it. Great view from your living room window. 

On one level we are condo-saturated; on another level we are building condos for foreigners to buy and in some cases not to inhabit but to sit empty. Some of these condos will be Airbnb, party time places for tourists but not a way to build our community.  

What a dump.

This is all falling apart.

Buildings on the left and right will be demolished; that's a condo across the street.