"Poets" by The Tragically Hip

 

January 2021

Spring starts when a heartbeat's pounding

When the birds can be heard above the reckoning carts doing some final accounting

Lava flowing in Superfarmer's direction

He's been getting reprieve from the heat in the frozen-food section

Don't tell me what the poets are doing

Don't tell me that they're talking tough

Don't tell me that they're anti-social

Somehow not anti-social enough

And porn speaks to its splintered legions

To the pink amid the withered cornstalks in them winter regions

While aiming at the archetypal father

He says with such broad and tentative swipes "Why do you even bother?"

Don't tell me what the poets are doing

Don't tell me that they're talking tough

Don't tell me that they're anti-social

Somehow not anti-social enough

Don't tell me what the poets are doing

On the street and the epitome of vague

Don't tell me how the universe is altered

When you find out how he gets paid

If there's nothing more that you need now

Lawn cut by bare-breasted women

Beach bleached, towels within reach for the women gotta make it

That'll make it by swimming

For those born on February 6th

When I heard that Gord Downie was born on February 6th I knew he was even more genuinely extraordinary than I originally thought. He also wrote one of my favourite songs , "The Poets", performed by The Tragically Hip. Who else is born on the 6th? Louis Dudek on February 6,1918, poet and McGill professor, who transformed Canadian poetry and also discovered Leonard Cohen and published Cohen's first book of poetry. Also the astrologer Axel Harvey, born in 1940, whose first wife was descended from Aaron Burr, and Aaron Burr was also born on February 6th. Ilona Martonfi, another poet, born on the 6th of February, she has bravely re-visioned her life through poetry and gone deeply into the interior. There is also my cousin, Herb Morrissey, born on February 6th 1938 in the Town of Mount Royal; Herb was a magician and businessman, founder of Morrissey Magic, and a truly unique man, loved and admired and missed by many.

This just in today: when I was growing up we used to spend the summer at a summer cottage in St. Eustache, QC, across the street from my grandmother, my Auntie Mable, and my Uncle Alex and Auntie Ivy. They were wonderful years. Next door to our cottage was where the writer Joseph Schull lived, in a cottage where he wrote behind his mother's house. Thinking back on it Joseph Schull was the first writer that I was aware of and I'm thinking of reading a few of his historical novels. He was born in North Dakota but grew up in Canada, he died in Montreal on 19 May 1980. He was born on February 6, 1906.