CONTENTdm
Prism international 22:3 / Spring 1984
Prism international
80 Pages
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international APRIL 1984 intetnational RICHARD STEVENSON Editor-in-Chief NONA KENT Managing Editor RICHARD STEVENSON Poetry Editor ANNE HENDERSON Drama Editor BILL HURST Fiction Editor LIDIA A. WOLANSKYJ Copy Editor JACQUELINE D'AMBOISE Translations Advisor GEORGE MCWHIRTER Advisory Editor Leo Cooper Marnie Duff John Foster Martha Henry Glenda Leznoff Lasha Seniuk Business Manager Editorial Board Michael Pacey Karen Petersen Greg Reinbold Lasha Seniuk JWU international A quarterly journal of contemporary writing PRISM international, a journal of contemporary writing, is published four times per year at the Department of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C. v6t IW5. Microfilm editions are available from Xerox University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and reprints from the Kraus Reprint Corporation, New York, N.Y. Contents Copyright si H584 PRISM international for the authors. Cover photo by Eduardo Meneses from 'Passion Play.' One year individual subscriptions $10.00, two-year subscriptions $16.00. Libraries and institution subscriptions $14.00, two-year subscriptions $20.00. Sample copy $4.00. All manuscripts should be sent to the Editors at the above address. Manuscripts must be accompanied by a self-addressed envelope with Canadian stamps or international reply coupons. Manuscripts with insufficient return postage will be held for six months and then discarded. Payment to contributors is $15.00 per page and a subscription. PRISM international purchases First N.A. Serial Rights only. Our gratitude to the Canada Council, Dean Will and the University of British Columbia. Also financially assisted by the Government of British Columbia through the British Columbia Cultural Fund and Lottery Revenues. Second Class Mail Registration No. 5496 April 1984. CONTENTS UME TWENTY-TWO NUMBER THREE SPRING 1984 Mark Jarman Cowboys, Inc. 7 Roberto Juarroz Four Poems 18 Louis Bourne "Weeds" 21 Joe Martin Passion Play 23 Marie Under "Moon of the Dead" 40 Roberto Juarroz Three Poems 42 Machado de Assis The Most Serene Republic 45 Osip Mandelstam Four Poems 52 George Faludy Three Sonnets 56 Gaston Miron Two Poems from Courtepointes 59 Jiri Klobouk excerpts from The Music Teacher 61 Suniti Namjoshi Two Poems 69 Jeni Couzyn Three Poems 72 John Pass Two Poems 77 Contributors 79 Mark A. Jarman Cowboys, Inc. Desire itself is movement Not in itself desirable. T. S. Eliot Drunk sheets of light, the ancient Volvo angle-parked in the Interstate rest area. Cooler inside: Jankovitch, slouched at the sink in shorts, a gaudy bowling shirt. A boy and a father yell at each other over the rush of hand dryers. BAM! Hot air whooshing loudly. "You warsh yer hands?" BAM! "Hahn?" yells the kid, two feet from his father. Ironchild cranking up on the government can, searching sideways for the mainline while Jankovitch fiddles impatiently with the button over the sink to get the weather radio. "YOU WARSH YER HANDS I SAID!!" The needle sinks into flesh, the father's new cowboy hat is blown from his small head. "YA!!" screams the kid in reply. And Ironchild has bought the farm, the last shot too pure or maybe just a piece of talc jamming an artery and boom, lights out, works still jabbed teetering in his pocked arm. "YOU WARSH YER FACE?! yells the father now, brushing dirty water from his felt hat. Jankovitch sees Ironchild, sees, closes the cubicle door behind him, grunting as he maneuvers Ironchild's now-heavy body, propping his paratrooper boots inside the toilet bowl, the dead man's armpits damp, his skinhead cut bristling at Jankovitch's face, breath gone, skin white, clammy, Jankovitch fumbling, grunting. "YOUR FACE. YOU WARSH YER FACE!" Jankovitch waits sweating: Leave fuckheads. The father and son finally exit. Jankovitch grabs the car keys, the German knife, wallet, cash, and, by reflex, the ziploc of powder; it has sentimental value. Jams the cubicle door shut with a matchbook wedge, scrawls Out of Order on a paper towel on the door. That should buy a few hours, hopes Jankovitch, maybe a day or two. With the warrant in Missouri there is little choice. A State trooper walks in leaning to the mirror to stare into his own red eyes, takes out a pink comb. "Comb the wind outta my hair," he says into the silence. He peers at the Out-of-Order sign, at Jankovitch's pen and heads for a further cubicle undoing his big leather belt and pants. "Damn," he says. "Can put a man on the friggin' moon, what's it take to keep one of these shitters running?" Yessir, speaks Jankovitch, sidling outside into yet another realm of meat. The sun makes him sneeze. A legless cowboy sells pencils from a wheelchair, duded up for the tourist kingdoms of heat and light. Jankovitch peels a one from the dead man's cash, gives it to the legless cowboy, the sin eater. "Much obliged, pard- ner." Buicks buzz in the sun like bluebottles. Jankovitch sneezes again. A mother: her child wants a drink. "Shut you up or I'll break your face." More sacred bonds; semis angled everywhere in the horrible glint. "Where you be headed?" she says. West, Jankovitch says. "You have a good day now, sir," she says. I will try to, he says. He walks to the rusting Volvo. Lightning Hopkins is dead now. Murray the K., John Wayne with his Nevada cancers gutting him like a fish. Virginia has her feet up in the front seat, perusing Thin Thighs in 30 Days. There is so much light around her, a haze of hooks, too private. She looks up at Jankovitch, at the book. "I used to have a fair vocabulary. . . kind of quit 'bout the time I started selling lawnmowers." All Jankovitch can think of is the bald janitor at the party insisting to Ironchild that all dances evolved from the polka, saying it over and over with such seriousness that Ironchild hit him and now Ironchild in the cubicle for some janitor to find. Jankovitch stares up the road into the grasshoppers, at the hundreds of flattened jackrabbits. Why this worship of death and youth, of carelessness? * The big country. Asleep. "Wake up. Wake up." Near Eastertime, too, the Lenten tornadoes touching down around the women in their gardens. "Wake up, buddy." Jankovitch closes his eyes to rise from cancerous dreams of flooded towns dying in silt rivers, farm land leaching out, drifting away, Ironchild toying with his needles and grinding blue pills in the failing light. "Wake up." Jankovitch jerks forward; "What?" saliva drying upturned in his stupid throat. Crows, nothing grows, gears gnash in testimony to bad driving and the Swedish car's endless capacity for punishment. This is the way they go: "We want you to drive again, okay?" Virginia in fedora and shades leaning over the seat to gently rouse Jankovitch who's down in shitkicker country again ("put the cunt back in country") swinging hard across the blue plains and raggedyass Cottonwood, the endless light through pale aspens and truckstop botulism, K Mart snakeskin cowboy boots, cheating songs, box elders. This is just after the grain elevator blew over to Missouri: burnt for days and they couldn't get at the bodies. In the blind pigs and roadhouses lizards cringe under the crashing rain of Wurlitzers and chicken bones. God and country are toasted. "Wake up, buddy." Jankovitch supposed to be loyally prone and deceased in that smoldering ruin, not snuck off from work in the cross-tracks bar when the elevator spontaneously disintegrated; providing halfcut Jankovitch an all-too-neat opportunity to duck the warrant, the women and possible pregnancies, the big debts, the whole grieving family. Missouri: Show Me State, population 4,676,000. Capital: Jefferson City. Best diner in Nine Eagles County: Hines Cedar Crest for Sunday brunch, fried chicken and eggs and thirty-one salads or Saturday night fishfry with their special recipe for carp and catfish. Jankovitch stares at the outline of her breasts shifting in a soft halter top. "Yes yes, I'm awake now." With darkness they are well west of the rivers, but still men stand on backwater banks spearing huge fish with three-tined pitchforks. Sand roads snake the steep hills, crossing and recrossing the smaller brackish channels. The cafe menus slowly lose fresh catfish and perch, buffalo fish. The Volvo zig-zags north, west, past Indian paintbrush and stallions glowing beside them, hooves sparking on bits of gravel; the four- cylinder engine an absurd fire sucking air cool through two carbs; night an azure tunnel. Loosening spring begins in mud, ends in mud, calves on the ground or splaying forefeet, endless births and fecundity terrible at times and Jankovitch still young, he thinks, pushing thirty, but it seems he's always pushing thirty. He stares once more at Virginia graceful in angora and her hat, smells her perfume. Willows flank the dust, cold beer and greased wheels carrying west over the big country, west and then north up the clean coast, dark rocks in sand, congealing circles slowing to the still point in the center of the wheel, the union of radii, like a Hollywood wagonwheel; the Volvo's polished baby moon hubcap, a still blurred eye enroute to wherever, Eureka, the north Oregon coastline, maybe Port Angeles and the Blackball ferry splitting the freezing water. Always speeding, Jankovitch deliberately ignoring the warning signs. Ironchild curled mumbling into his own world in the dim back seat, hunkered with his cache and his vomiting paranoia and god knows what in his head and arms; "I need my muscatel so I can be well. ..." Virginia and Jankovitch drop into the golden bowl of earth. Green evenings, wind blowing the first warmth of the season. The three of them stop in small towns to purchase fresh crusty rolls, bakery donuts, creamery butter, chicken-fried steak and a huge block of Wisconsin cheese. In Rook River locals stare at Ironchild; shivering, a blanket wrapped like a cerement around his shoulders, his skinhead cut, tinted mod glasses, Union Jack T-shirt, zippered army pants and clunky paratroop boots. A woman is a support system for a cunt, he says and Virginia slaps him hard. Jankovitch bides his time, comforts Virginia. Trust now in Christ, yells Ironchild at the bar. This ain't no disco! Ironchild, I gave you my purse, says Virginia. Where did you put it? You gave me your purse, har har. Put money in thy purse. He lights a smoke, spreads slow large hands into a laugh. Har har, go dance. Trust now in Christ, go dance with Jankovitch, all this bullshit. . . Swat squad could come in here . . . they get nothing from me. Hey listen, striking a fist down. This stuffs good. All you guys, ever been busted? Busted? Gimme that damn cowboy hat, you ever ridden a horse, huh? Go dance, you two, go dance. Virginia and Jankovitch are silent. Ironchild flicks ash, knocks over a chair, recounts a dispute over another chair, another bar, something about a door, it is hard to tell. So I went outside, he says, I was hammered but calm you know, came back in later and drank and they say I'm barred for life, eighty-sixed. They can't do that, can they? Hell . . . can't go to prison for life. His sad puzzled look. Plastic deer on the lawns and they drive, skies cleaned and deer on the lawns, police flashers bouncing on the grottos to the Virgin Mary. Jankovitch throws away his wallet. The Pom-Pom Girls has played all year at the local drive-in. The mechanical woodpeckers every dawn and in the mist, cattle bellowing as if being gored or, as Ironchild allows, involved in some heavy fucking. Looking longfully at two horses by a rusting corncrib, neck to neck in the filtered light, Jankovitch envies their ease with one another (and he pressed the accelerator further to the wood, lighting for the territories, cursing to himself wait till this mythless century shuts down and my fucking hair falls out and what's it matter, only wanting to be pure again, undiseased, to do it over again but this is not in the cards and then the merry-go-round of blue flashers, the man touching the night's perimeter, the grottos, to tell of just what can and can't be done on this religious backroad, in this century, the limits, the tickets Jankovitch can never hope to cover). The two awkwardly switch seats so that Virginia, the ex-schoolteacher, the best driver, and not Jankovitch, hands a license to the police. A spider web over her face, the police a floating border astride the traveler's inarticulate hunger for happy trails, miles, women, to pay later. The dead man won't stop drinking or shooting and Virginia cries in the tent. She washes his needles dutifully. The year before nursed him from a yellow bed of hepatitis. Go dance! he yells. In October he locked her in the cold room, afraid of losing her, knowing. She washes his needles. Just a little toot! he cries now, crashing into the undergrowth. Glaucous gulls, polyglot. A tongue moves among lips. For Your Well- Being: We have provided electric hand dryers to protect you from disease. Stinking hands, cancer will be kind to me. He took her by the wrists, the white hills where there were no trees because at first she laughed, a joke on Ironchild leaving him but then realizing it is serious; yelling, yanking at the emergency brake until it reeked of smoke and friction. Hitting Jankovitch, pull over, pull over, jesus, where is Ironchild?, and Jankovitch yelling back, look he's dead I can't stay, not with that warrant over my fucking head and me supposed to be dead in Missouri (realizing that he didn't even know who owned the car). If you want to stay (didn't want to know). If you want to stay. And there were no trees (took her by the wrists because . . . ), only boul- 10 ders that looked to have fallen from another planet into the sculpted twisted badlands, her crying, crying, the paltry rivers, crossing and recrossing the same goddam rivers all day (me supposed to be dead, not him), all day she wouldn't stop crying, no trees and always seeming to be a third with them. Her light eyes and dark eyebrows, brownish blond curls, bony cheeks and earrings giving her an older, lupine or gypsy-like appearance. Both crying. They washed and took some of the assortment of pills. She wore makeup now and in the new heat wore only panties and a bra, the white strap bisecting her sleek back. The vehicle, Yellow- knife, velar voices sunk in throats, seats. The plains fill with wind. The rattling seedpod logic of the cut fields, the plotted grid striped with ditches of purple weeds and prairie flowers: bluebells, blackeyed susans, hawkweeds. Wild sunflowers bend and bend. In the distance, beyond Virginia's freckled profile, rain slopes in indigo columns. "It will be rain tonight." A satellite dish perches over the cinderblock motel and rented roughneck trailers. Oil and cattle dividing the empty quarter. "Let it come down." The fine curves of her throat, wisps of loose hair about the schoolteacher's cheek, the back of her neck, her throat. Water hangs silver in midair. A razor. In the cinderblock rooms around them the drugstore cowboys lie on narrow bunks as Jankovitch moves into her for the first time, as hard as he can, knows he will come too soon, but doesn't slow, resigned, the cheap bed shrieking, the bored cowhands around them sipping longnecks and gazing at The Wat- tons or fuckflicks from the satellite dish, the strange fruit of the space race; grainy breasts spread in blue windows, huge thighs kicking over the republic's dark fields, eyes always on the screen, uncapping mickeys or lighting Chesterfields by reflex, eyes locked blindly on the oval screens where a tearful John Boy won't shoot the doe or giant vaginas open in a red glistening. They leave their hats on indoors, not a movement is wasted. Jankovitch wears the dead man's hat for a while as he fucks her, his being shrunken and full of peanuts. "Goodnight, John Boy," the cowboys murmur in unison or hum along to The Ballad of Palladin, by Johnny Western, the ferret-like cowhands grasping wads of toilet paper, the lone couple coming, this, uh, can't, yes? go, jesus, go on. Is it safe? They age in his arms. Always. "Be back shortly." The dead man jolts to a halt in one joyless burg, a county seat with Italian Gothic courthouse on the customary rise, to break into Big Valu Pharmacy, the two, three, nervous, hurry hurry christ hurry, sweat tingling in odd angles down the shirtback cotton, eyes up and down the spooked alley, the big metal doors creaking, jesus h. christ will you hurry, Ironchild?, and he does, smooth, strangely efficient, escaping back into the anarchy of flight and vision splintered between coasts. No wonder they hate the outsiders, thinks Jankovitch, no wonder the beatings in poolhalls, the hair-trigger shooting over 20<f of spilt popcorn. Where you from? they'll ask. Yazoo, he says giggling. Yazoo City. Fuck what a mouth. Going back soon, too, love Yazoo and so on. . . . He looked like a fag golfer in that purple shirt and he wouldn't leave it fuckin' alone. Yazoo! They took him. They're not from here. No one is from here. Jankovitch wakes on the Interstate, tense, nervous, unrested. Dreams of nothing, of close to nothing, of the parallel nations of ropes and posses, the borders, the chases, cowboys crossing champaign and treed slopes, the chase dreams, crossing ancient sea bottoms now in grain and being forced to face things at the fence, the tree. In nightmares begin re- sponsibilites and Ironchild worries Jankovitch, doing more Talwin when he can, pacing it occasionally with the stolen Demerol, cans of Busch, chocolate bars, garbage collecting at his feet. Shadows under his bright eyes. Ironchild grins, smelling of sweat and borax; he never changes his T-shirt. Virginia and Jankovitch change once or twice a day. In South Dakota, above a reservoir at sunset, they buy beer and a good hairbrush on the dead man's credit card. Jankovitch's scalp itching. Spring flooding, rivers twist into blue-red evening. Ironchild passed out again, breathing noisily. Virginia calmly signs, Jankovitch nervous, not wanting to leave his name; to leave nothing. They wash up. Passing the derelict feedlots at Ash Hollow and then the Cowboy Church of Christ, its sign in looping lariat script, a polished ochre cow- horn over the doors. Every time they pass a church Jankovitch shudders at the sharp steeples, sees the works stuck in Ironchild's white fish-flesh, teetering on the toilet, another dead country. After showering at the YMCA: Ironchild in the stairwell, a wrestling mat hung. He pounds it fiercely, his fists blurred. Wouldn't want ten of those to the head, would you? he says. Uh no. Jankovitch is part of the car now, no longer stepping out to stretch or exercise, hands nailed to the wheel, staring ahead, smelling the gasoline fumes, the road, everything; moving, random, sweet, his lost colors. Drive and drive until everything flies apart. Then breakfast. Worried, Virginia has to pry him from between the Volvo's rusting fenders. Inside Ironchild turns at the table: "Got me a problem back in Missouri, people say this, people say that 'bout me. But I don't know who. Buddy, give me a name, I wanna be kissed when I get screwed." He takes a drink of lukewarm water, stares sadly over the white plains. Jankovitch buys a local paper: HE HUNTED DOWN 13 YOUNGSTERS WHILE DRIVING SHINY RENTAL CAR. The Red Brigade's Giovanni Ciucci confessed: "I could not succeed in seeing him as an enemy, but only as a man who was sleeping." Finds an article: Jehoshaphat Flats — An investigation is underway into a series of drug-related break-ins at medical offices in the northwest area of the state over a two-day period this week. . . . 12 "Ya'll want coffee? Ya'll want this on one ticket?" Jankovitch jumps, a huge waitress, wrinkles between blue earrings. They ask for tea, pigs in a blanket, Huevos Rancheros, chicken fingers, beans, unsweetened grapefruit juice, ambience, greasy ions. Jankovitch stares at a mass of eggs on the hot grill palpitating like a yellow heart. Ironchild eats in seconds; it is there, it is gone. A cockroach or something on Jankovitch's thigh. He flicks it down and stomps. After, he wonders if he was hallucinating and keeps lifting his foot to make sure it is there. A local saunters in and the waitress pulls him a diet Pepsi before the man has spoken. The cook stands with a greasy spatula: "That be Pepsi and tenderloin or tenderloin and Pepsi?" "Either way. Got any good numbers left?" He puts money on a football game. "You wanna give me your tip now," says the cook, winking at the waitress. "I get off early." The cook laughs. "Last tip he gave me: Don't. . . eat. . . yellow . . . snow," drawing out each word slowly for effect. Outside there are apples and blood in the gutter. Jankovitch and Virginia and Ironchild stare. The floating wood of the storefronts. The primary colours surrounding the car, the food on their breath. Nightcrawlers 90?. Jankovitch wipes the film of grease from his forehead, eases sweaty shirtback from the seat, reads the ads painted roughly on sagging white-trash barns, reads them: Bull Durham, Mountain Dew, Do You Want Your Freedeom * Joy * Heaven?, Wrigley's Spearmint—Chew It After Every Meal, nodding he will, of course he will. Ironchild out of it again in the back seat and she looks over with her catlike eyes, the plains a bed, a white sea behind her head and she bends her long hair into his lap as he drives jolting, surprised, uh yeah, her bending into him and Ironchild stirs, wakes in the back seat: Where we now, buddy? asked sleepily. Near Red Mound, whispers Jankovitch, not knowing or caring where the hell they are. She's sleeping, he says, still whispering, lying. Ironchild rubbing his eyes like a child and Virginia calmly covers Jankovitch's unzipped lap with a jean jacket, feigns sleep. Jankovitch thinks of Ironchild's flailing fists in the green stairwell. Wanna stop? You thirsty? Not this cowboy, says the dead man. Wash up? Maybe coffee to go? Whatever, whatever, he says, sounding irritated now, staring out. Gotta get gas. Ya. Some fun now, thinks Jankovitch. Ironchild begins a groggy wash of talk about the last time he got busted, how two Blackfeet made the mistake of looking at him so he knocked out the closest with a flying kick, pounding the inert form on the sidewalk. The second man fled behind a Pontiac to draw a knife from his boot. He sliced Ironchild's arm and shoulders. (Ironchild stretches his T-shirt, points to the scars, the proud flesh knotted in lines.) Bleeding, Ironchild grabbed the long black hair, 13 smashed the man's face into the hood over and over, face, metal, face mashed flat, bone, caved-in bone, a noise like a garbage can lid. A fat man intervened with a tire iron, complaining of the mess and dents in the hood. Yazoo City. With a reddening shirt Ironchild fled, fueled on adrenalin and diet pills until tackled by an off-duty cop in the alley behind the Army & Navy. Two male prostitutes were dragged into the same remand cell arguing, one bragging a John on The Hill had paid him $50, the second outraged, screaming "Ten! Ten dollars! No more, never." They fought and two older prisoners broke them apart then forced them to "give face" as Ironchild called it. "Better than my wife," growled one. "These guys know what they're doing." Virginia rises. So did you indulge? she asks, sounding jealous. Not this cowboy, Ironchild says. I told 'em I'd watch for the screws. Jankovitch has the distinct feeling he should hop out and grab a Greyhound at the next town. Why do I stay? he wonders. This is what he thinks Ironchild has: Talwin, black beauties, NoDoz, an antihistamine that Jankovitch cannot pronounce, the Demerol, grinding teeth, a jumpy walk. Ironchild may have more, they cannot be sure. He slurs some words. In Wyoming the three of them buy cowboy hats, one of those moments. A beautiful corner of the state, beef country, blue mountains in the distance. Inexplicable nostalgia, cattle and green cool hills shouldering up from each side of a hissing current, the spring prairie torrent deceptively dangerous. Blue mountains in the distance. Their three shadows lean and roll as if stranded in an open boat: he drove, she drove, then the other drove, and then she drove and he drove, they drove and they drove, climbing toward the higher passes and the terrible mining towns. Under red nimbostratus, black hulks staring at the soil, stoic, bovine, the stray spears of grain confused in last year's stubble. Speed, speed, the counties blurring two centuries past the cracked glass, the inevitable descent into fatigue and puzzlement, climbing, her stockings beside his leg and the giddy wonderment of these distances and her new body, the vast plateaus, the new comprehension of geography, the million schizoid nations of North America. His maps: Jankovitch can still see the nuns and old schoolmaps, dusty Mexico, El Chichon pouring crud into the air to the south, 60 million tons of ash; sulphur dioxide gas, salt and dust in a cloud circling the earth every ten days, altering the weather over the crazy checkerboard squares of the Union and pink Canada almost tangible, breathing to the north. Jankovitch reaches a fevered hand out the window toward the sleeping cool light, another into her as she drives, the arbitrary borders, the blue silos of sweetgrass, Texas Playboys and Joy Division in an unlikely combination on the radio. The ash circles the alfalfa and red clover. Jankovitch drives the peaks in his favorite red T-shirt, found on the 14 ski hill after a knee-wrenching wipe-out. The ligaments still sore. Virginia silent, thinking, watching Jankovitch's arm muscles in the bright shirt, leaning with the small car, physically forcing it stiff-armed through the mountain curves and hairpins, accelerating, always accelerating, whooping, swooping downhill until the red needle is buried, in the rear- view the dead man floating up white-faced from his attempt at rest on the stiff back seat. Jankovitch laughing at his worried expression. Hey, buddy, you always drive this fast? asks the dead man. I'm getting rocked around a mite. We're making good time, go crank some more shit. You got a lot of class, you know that, do you, buddy. Maybe you should try a little of this shit, cool your jets quick, I don't think it's ever been stepped on. Me? Cut the crap, I got enough problems without yours. No, buddy, I mean it. The wind smells nice, she says. I feel sick, she says. You been chippying, too? asks the dead man. Into Silver Valley. Wind off the hardpan plains shakes the saskatoon berries. Raybeats' Piranha Salad jangling the FM out of some Montana college town. Have a line. North, losing spring, all that. Winter wheat, the ancient pulls, secrets draining lives. The threat of rain at night, dependent on women and supermarkets. I'm dead, thinks Jankovitch. Night. Why does she stay? She blames my stupid brooding and outbursts on an Irish temper, ranting after a bad pool shot, a flat tire. Her thin form in the flawed mirrors and motels, bent in the modern dance; the bars neon atolls in the buffalo grass. Her nostrils, her bare heel on a wooden floor tightening her calf and his groin, the way her legs run together against his throat. He wants her in the room where she stands, her brown back to him, ironing blouses in her underwear until he tears the panties from her, nuzzling her ass and climbs her spine to lean, a speck of caution crawling insectlike in the back of his mind but body and cock push on until the ironing board crashes down and they're dazed reptiles scrabbling among the floor's beercans as the dead man comes out of the bathroom in torn fruit- of-the-looms, haggard and silent behind yellow light, sniffs, moving each side of his mouth. Jankovitch waits for the punishment he has courted, the ten to the head or kicks along the ribcage but Ironchild turns back to whatever, his constipation from Talwin or recalling which arm or leg is next. Embarrassed, Jankovitch falls into the prickly armchair, sinking into dreams of curtains flashing on her metal skin, Ironchild in the tub, tides of highway traffic behind her shape, and her shape, no longer pissed off, wakes him to move to the bed half asleep, undressing quietly and falling into each other's riddled karma, the big curves push-pull-pushing and •5 everyone must know this bliss, cats falling in the air and gone into the rhythms of sleep. Nearly all the men have lost one thumb. The din of the roadside bar: horrible coughing through old-fashioned drooping mustaches, the suction sound of fridge doors, words sputtered out, boots slamming the rough wood. Nearly all the men have lost one thumb roping calves, the digit caught and ground away between the coarse rope and the hard leather saddlehorn. Money changes hands at the pool tables. Glasses smash. The men hang up yellow slickers, order a shot and chaser and squint and blink on the front stoop into the drunken light to the north, throats cleared of the railroad dust, spittle mixed with dust and hardened Montana mud, the payments waiting, going crazy in their thin grey skin, itching for some odd congress. Sad bluegrass and cowboys jumping up and down, up and down, yahoo, on some poor clown in the parking lot, their playground. Lookit those sonsabitches, says Ironchild. They know how to live. Yippee Ti Yi Yo! White crosses in the ditch where the highway curves down from Canada. Jankovitch fills his hat with beernuts and leaves it on the picnic table where they eat from it as they drain can after can of Foster's. Rain falls overnight. In the sere morning the hat is shrunken, bent, unrecognizable, sodden and floating with peanut skins and sugar. Virginia laughs, her kiss a hint of tongue between her lips. She's his only sure thing. Balling the jack across the shale and limestones, the faulted anticlines and sawtoothed ridges, into the cirques. Jankovitch contemplates his fucked- up life: buzzing the awful country, drunken prairies and basement rock; evading responsibility and age, ignoring the mirrors, used clothes;fuck it man, never any money, never a car, renting rooms, alternately cultivating and blowing liaisons, wandering tired and staying with friends, lovers, bumming off relatives, in motel dives, on bus seats, couches; it gets old. No fatted calves left for this cowboy. * Hallway air, flies going crazy. She comes out of the shower. Jankovitch watches his cock disappear into her. Do you like to hike? Jesus, yes, I like to. Oh god. You like to hike? Jankovitch thrusting on each verb. Fuck yes, love hiking, fuck. So. . . . His hand holding the back of her neck, closer and closer to her until he feels he will disappear, his heart beating through her into the mattress. * Roads slick, another white cross in the Montana ditch, another sign ignored. Rain soaks into the corrals and manure. Downhill to a curve at the bottom of the hill and the car is sliding sideways, just about through the curve and the rear left wheel catches the edge. Is it rolling, Bob? Yes, rolling trees and horizon, roll and lie flat and spring up again spinning in the headlights, cans in the air, then stopped and steam from the radiator 16 and tick-ticking from the dead Volvo dribbling out oil. Headlights still on, pointing. Jankovitch grins through splintered teeth because now, helpless, they await the ghouls from the pre-fabs, John Law with his flashing baubles and squeaking holster. Caught in the straps, the straps, his arm at an unnatural angle; now they are hung upside-down miles past Little Big Horn and Virginia's face is a strange star, her ruined mouth leaking blood into a spreading stain over his clothes and though it may well mean she's still alive he wishes the dripping would cease because the car is on its roof and he can't stop puking up the last of the Wisconsin cheese. His one sure thing. Border dreams, cuts himself from the wreck. Turn these fucking headlights off before the ghouls get wind. Finally. Staggers to the slick road and the next high plains cowtown, buys Levis and a pearl-button shirt, tosses a bloody bundle in the weeds. He can't keep food down. Bruised ribs out like a dog's. He wants a bus to the clean coast, to start over, away from the binges of deceit and drinking, the trail of abortions and carwashes, mescal and frozen grins, reckless driving, drinking. New Gleem! Fights The Enemies Of Your Mouth. He swears he's going to change. Starting Monday. There is too much light at the border; at the stainless steel table they appear ready to dine. The people dress and dream in uniform, dream of the fabled pipelines, donkeys and powder caches. This is their lair, try and tell them it is a false border, that none of it matters. Jankovitch imagines the sick line of questioning: anything to declare? Ha; where can you start? He remembers all the women, the grain elevator turning to atoms, maybe he's still there —but he recalls the great timbers and chunks splintering outside the neon bar. Ashes, water, the stench of grain burning the back of his nostrils. Fuck 'em, he's alive, in flight. But there at the border with the guards at the ferry terminal is the dead man, in, of all things, a fucking suit. Ironchild in a suit! Shaven with a tight white grin and waving a paper. Jankovitch does not have to read it to know his own scrawl: OUT OF ORDER. All the women on the bus, there are only women on the bus, turn back to stare at Jankovitch in his sling. He wishes for Virginia now. Now he sees they are all pregnant and staring at him accusingly. A blade in his hands. With his good arm he presses it to his throat. The ziploc. He is washing, washing his hands in the can. Anything to declare? Jesus. He reads the green ticket: I Plead Guilty To The Offense As Charged And Will Pay The Penalty As Proscribed. Terribilus est locus este. Where is Virginia? Did you eat the last of the cheese? Her soft drawl. Washing. Yes, Virginia, I confess, the last of the good Wisconsin cheese. El Chichon's ashes circle one more time. The strap keeps falling from her ivory shoulder. He replaces it but it keeps falling and falling from her ivory shoulder. 17 Roberto Juarroz /Four Poems from "Seventh Book of Vertical Poetry" MAYBE SLEEP GATHERS US TOGETHER SOMEWHERE ELSE Maybe sleep gathers us together somewhere else, Free, then, from the sack, in which we hold wakefulness, Released from the trappings with which we dress up As farmers of the light. Maybe the people of the night deep inside Need no square to summon their assembly, Nor arcade, nor agora, nor parliament, But only the vision and the image set free. And maybe in the uncensored depths of each of us The coin is minted for the exchange of everyone, The transaction without interest for the unlimited encounter, The way of being oneself that is gained through no one. Maybe sleep opens the way To the only chance of making ourselves eternal, Not as a sum of savage profiles, But as the dust of tiniest stars In a shared penumbra. 18 IN THE BOWELS OF SUMMER In the bowels of summer, The voice of the ice-cream man echoes Like a clearer fiber. It is not childhood returning. It is not something of god's dressed in white. It is not a moon in daylight. It is only the possible Showing us its existence. The impossible never raises its voice. THE HEART MOLDS SUMMITS The heart molds summits, Potter of heights, But sometimes these very heights Stop it from descending. Prisoner then of its own labor, It grows thin on the border of the blocked return And rains drop by drop Onto lost time. There are lives that are like the rain. Rain is also the evidence Of captive hearts higher up. '9 MY SHADOW'S INITIATIVE My shadow's initiative Has taught me to be humble. It traces me indifferently On the emaciated seats Of early morning trains, On the seamless walls of cemeteries Or on the half-light of shortcuts That betray the city. The setting is of no concern. Nor are the maimed inscriptions. My shadow belies me at every step, It misleads me in the hollow space of all corners And never answers my questions. My shadow has taught me to take on other shadows. My shadow has set me in just the right place. translated from the Spanish by Louis Bourne 20 Louis Bourne WEEDS Anchored to socks, They cede, travel, Hook fine sandy Stars to legs Passing. Share wind's Track, choking Thyme and thistle, One reeking musty Woman, one raising A silky wound. They lunch on air. Streamlined to lace A lung's live shape, They dance to times Kept by one stray breath. Nights are when anxious Fingers stroke stems Struck with fear, Racing all day, Exploding in splintered Shrieks. Birds cry, Fly away. Weathered fields Left, last, Grow wild, freed In numbers. Herds Drift over gold Crests, dropping seed, Loveless birth to comb Castile, harsh stubble For hardened people Weaned on the lean meat From dry dugs. 21 Where browns sing, Where the dead ooze up To air and sway, Where cheeks become Awns, and a memory Trickles into sight, Green spiders Drink dark wine From the rocky flanks. Weeds poise, Bow to a twist Of searing light. Clutch like climbers To a patch of peace. Moving fast, by guile They root, breed, And stay. 22 Joe Martin Passion Play A Short Play for Masks Passion Play was first produced at the Tools for Peace benefit in Vancouver, sponsored by the Coalition for Aid to Nicaragua, on December 3rd, 1983. It was performed in a vast warehouse on Pine Street by The Buffoon Troupe, with the following cast: CHARACTERS PRIEST CHRIST (a villager) MARY (a villager) THE PRESIDENT THE GENERAL THE AMBASSADOR Luke Lukaszek Colin MacPherson Trish Barclay Thomas McCay Ronald J. Roth well Michael Daniel SENORA MENDEZ (a big landowner) Cat Majors Directed by Joe Martin Designed and stage-managed by Elena Feder Masks created by Gina Bastone Mask training by "O Sweet Clown" Stage constructed by Gary Coulter and Paul Coulter Percussion by Eduardo Meneses Spiritual guide and crowd gatherer: Gerardo Avila PASSION PLAY ° 1983 by Joe Martin. For information concerning rights for professional or amateur productions, contact THE NEW PLAY CENTRE, P.O. Box 34091, Station D, Vancouver, B. C, CANADA V0J4MI, or write to the author at 109 —1298 W. 10th Ave., Vancouver, B. C. CANADA v6h 1J4. 23 A production of PASSION PLAY should resemble a life-size puppet show, rather than anything close to a "realistic play." Although the play is written for masks, for CHRIST and MARY as "the innocents", face paints should be sufficient. Wherever the play is performed, there should be sufficient light for audience members to see one another as well as the performers. A country in Latin America. An altar. CHRIST enters, carrying a huge cross on a stand. He is followed by MAR Y and a PRIEST. PRIEST Set it up behind the altar, Julio. CHRIST places the cross upright behind the altar. PRIEST You both look wonderful. You know, my heart is never so glad as when it comes time for our town to put on the Passion again. The people have much to grieve for —but once each year, when they reenact the Passion, they are freed from their pain. The venom, for a short period, is drained from their hearts. CHRIST Yes, Father. PRIEST Let me ask you a question, Julio —and you, Made- lena? You may find it an odd question, perhaps. You are peasants yourselves. You've played these roles for years. Have you ever worried, that the people... in their grief. . . would get carried away, and. . . MARY Yes, Father? PRIEST Well. . . take the crucifixion scene a bit too seriously? CHRIST and MARY look at each other. CHRIST No, Father. PRIEST No, of course not. But I've often thought about how explosive their grief must be. Pent up like that, from day to day. How is it that you seem so secure among them, when they are in that state? CHRIST They are all my children. i 24 PRIEST What? Pause. Don't you forget who you are, now, Julio. MARY Don't worry, Father. He has been playing the part for many years now. On the day of the Passion the part takes possession of him, in a way. PRIEST Yes, and I'm very grateful that you both perform with such serenity. Especially this year. I'll confide a little something to you. I'm worried this year. El Seiior Presidente should be arriving any minute now. He's come to inspect the local army garrison. They say there's been trouble in the outlying areas. I hope nothing will spoil our sacred holiday here. Looks off. Ah, here comes the President now! Take your positions! CHRIST gets up on the cross. MAR Y kneels beneath it. They freeze, as if becoming statues. The PRESIDENT enters. PRESIDENT Good afternoon, Father. I must speak to you. He goes on his knees, and beckons the PRIEST towards him. Father, in recent days, I confess to you, I have had second thoughts about my faith. PRIEST Yes, Mr. President, my son? PRESIDENT I have entertained thoughts of converting to Theoso- phy, for I am a vegetarian, and do not believe in harming animals. A commotion off: Shouts, cries, gunfire. A voice can be heard yelling: "Pow, pow, pow! That's got them!" PRIEST (Looks up anxiously) You need not give up your faith over such an issue. PRESIDENT People in the Church have humiliated me, lately. They accused me of destroying ten thousand lives in one year. But I have thought it over, and since The- osophy says that a man is reincarnated after death, and an ant must die once and for all, I now see that killing an ant is a greater crime than killing a man. 25 PRIEST Such thoughts are a sin. There is no reincarnation. PRESIDENT And yet I believe it —for I know I will never die and leave this earth forever. I now own five latifundios. I am one with my land, and land is eternal! My land — that the peasants want to take from me. Listen Father, I am convinced beyond any doubt, that I and my lands are protected by invisible legions. The invisible legions keep me in telepathic communication with the President of the United States, and they report all plots against me. I am indestructible. You see? This has given me new faith. Father, I am born again. PRIEST A Protestant? PRESIDENT Call it what you like. I believe in the one true path. PRIEST Can you walk that path by killing a man who steps in your way? Like an ant? PRESIDENT I have had letters of condolence sent to the families of anyone ordered killed by my office. Those dealt with by the invisible legions, I cannot be held responsible for. Explosions off. Cries. CHRIST and MAR Y glance in the direction of the noise, then return to their frozen positions. The GENERAL and the AMBASSADOR enter. GENERAL Pow! Pow! Pow! PRESIDENT (Rising) Ah, General. Mr. Ambassador! PRIEST What has happened in the town? GENERAL Peasants were marching onto the land of Seriora Mendez. They carried signs saying "Down with the oligarchy!" PRIEST What. . . what have you done? This is a peaceful town! GENERAL We're sorry, Father. We have been meeting with the Ambassador today, to see if we can come up with a solution to all this nasty violence. It is a terribly complicated thing. It takes time. 26 The PRIEST runs out. PRESIDENT Father! Ah, these men of the cloth are sensitive souls. But, we do need to find a solution. I live for the day that we have peace and harmony in our country. General, the Ambassador here insists that the solution lies in free and open elections. GENERAL Of course, I agree. Openness is everything. If we can get the opposition out in the open, then we can get a good shot at them. We eliminated their whole national committee last time they accepted our invitation to come into the open. PRESIDENT General! You should be able to do your job without engaging in such blatant duplicity! Am I right, Mr. Ambassador? GENERAL My men have done all they can, without help. Mr. Ambassador, you have several regiments of men just across the border. And what are they doing in our hour of need? Sitting on their gunbutts! AMBASSADOR General, I'll tell you something. Our boys —those are good boys. The fact is, they are not supposed to be here to fight. They are here to train your soldiers. They are here as technicians. Do you think they like it? You must realize how hard it is on them: sitting it out in the dugout —waiting in the bullpen — while out on the field you have nothing but a lot of second-rate players. I can tell you, Mr. President —they are chafing at the bit. They are good boys, and want to do their part. . . He points an accusing finger. But General, I must say it. I saw what you did to that village. I had no idea! So that's what you've been up to?! I tell you, Mr. President, you've got a lot of second-rate people down here. It's time to send them back to the minor leagues. GENERAL (Flabbergasted) But sir. . . we have followed your instructions to a T. The village was wiped out. The idea was to exterminate the rebels — that is, all women and children associated with any adult males who refused to join the government's civil defense squad. AMBASSADOR Now you listen to me: you understood only the letter 27 of the counterinsurgency strategy, not the spirit. Your boys don't understand the spirit in which it must be carried out. GENERAL I commanded them to prove their manhood in the campaign. I can report, sir —these so-called boys are men — each and every one! AMBASSADOR General, don't you have eyes in your head? That will never work! GENERAL Why not? AMBASSADOR You need to get these people free from Red mind control. That's all. GENERAL What... is that exactly? AMBASSADOR What is it? It's that which makes them dislike you. I'll explain the method again. You must set up strategic hamlets. It's a tried and true method. Burn the old ones, and place them in a new location where they will support your side. PRESIDENT It's just what I've been telling you. GENERAL If they are in a new location they will support us? AMBASSADOR Yes. Because you will be able to watch them. He paces. Get this straight, General: my government cannot possibly support acts of genocide and cruelty . . . CHRIST and MARY, behind, have been listening attentively to these last speeches. The AMBASSADOR stops, turns about as if to see if he's been overheard—but CHRIST and MARY quickly return to their freeze. AMBASSADOR . . . even though it is true that they are not, uh . . . carried out by yourselves. GENERAL What do you mean we don't carry them out?! AMBASSADOR (Sternly) Listen very carefully, General. See if you can get my drift. The atrocities are committed by un- 28 known terrorists, either of the lunatic Right or the lunatic Left —or even the moderate Left. But not by you —got it? GENERAL I believe that my men deserve some credit. AMBASSADOR (Pulling papers from his breast pocket) Promise me that before you meet the press tomorrow afternoon, that you will read the press kit. Look here. Out of 12,000 politically-motivated killings last year in this country — which have been investigated in detail by our embassy —930 are attributable to the Left, 900 to the Right —and all the others were victims of X factors and unknown quantities. PRESIDENT Mr. Ambassador. Today is a day of honesty for me. I am turning over a new leaf. My soul feels so pure that I must speak frankly. I have nothing to hide. Mr. Ambassador, I feel partly to blame. It may be my invisible legions that are the culprits. They seem to be my personal protectors, but I have no control over them. GENERAL "Invisible legions"! I tell you, it was my men, and only my men, performing their duty to the Fatherland. AMBASSADOR (Amazed) General, you are a hard man to do business with. But I do admire your pluck. PRESIDENT But pluck doesn't always mix with true diplomacy, am I right, Mr. Ambassador? GENERAL You must excuse me. Sefiora Mendez is due to arrive any minute outside. We have just saved her land from a peasant mutiny. She is badly shaken, and will need support and consolation. He goes out. The AMBASSADOR and the PRESIDENT watch him leave. PRESIDENT Well, on a lighter note —I must say it is a pleasure to see you again, Mickey. AMBASSADOR It's been some time, eh Miguel? 29 PRESIDENT We had some great times, eh! Those days when you were doing public relations for the Juan Valdez Coffee Company of New Jersey. Why did you ever take a political appointment? AMBASSADOR Well, you know, sometimes we have to give up the pleasures of business, and think of the longer view. PRESIDENT Do you remember that you and I were both present at a very historic meeting? AMBASSADOR Historic meeting? Which historic meeting? PRESIDENT You know, when we signed the agreement allowing your companies to take coffee out of the country tariff-free? And your side agreed in return to export enough tomatoes and lettuce to us to feed fifty thousand of our people? AMBASSADOR I always regarded you, Mr. President, as a congenial negotiator. PRESIDENT Thanks, Micky. AMBASSADOR Feeding fifty thousand was not much to ask — considering that yours is a country of eight million. You grow only coffee and sugar — for us. PRESIDENT I believe, as a negotiator for my country, in being reasonable. The important thing was to feed our European population, who are, after all, first cousins to your own countrymen. They are our general staff. Our spiritual aristocracy. AMBASSADOR Say, didn't we sign that agreement with. . . ? PRESIDENT Oh! Was it... ? AMBASSADOR By God, it was! With old Mauser! PRESIDENT Mauser? Wasn't it with your present Secretary of State? AMBASSADOR Yes, yes of course. Right in his old law office. PRESIDENT Did we call him "Mauser"? I thought it was "Twin- kies". i SENORA MENDEZ enters with the GENERAL, holding 3° his arm. PRESIDENT Ah, here is Senora Mendez. SENORA So good to see you, Sefior President. And you, Mr. MENDEZ Ambassador. I've had the fright of my life. There were hundreds of barefoot Indians trying to get their greedy hands on my land again. They marched right up the road through the latifundio to our home! They were chanting "Land, land, land!" They carried signs, with "hunger" written all over them. But I ask you —why us? Why me? Half of this department is owned by Valdez Coffee of New Jersey. They could have sent a telegram to Trenton just as easily. It's because I'm an easy target. . . I'm vulnerable . . . She starts to cry. The GENERAL offers her a handkerchief. Thank you General. Thank you all for coming. You have seen what damage they wreaked. My asthma has gotten worse. The people in that village were wreaking damage. GENERAL Troublemakers, Senora. To the AMBASSADOR. They had begun to farm their own food. That can't be permitted. SENORA Well, thanks to the unified stand we have taken, they MENDEZ are gone now. I'm sorry Mr. Ambassador. I've been so distraught. Forgive my behavior. You know, don't you, that I've always considered myself, at heart, a citizen of your great and free country, before any other. AMBASSADOR Yes. Since that last IMF loan, I should say that you are one. I notice your private militia has purchased our jeeps. PRESIDENT Your North American friendliness and your spirit of internationalism are heartening for all of us. It is my dream that one day, our country will be joined to yours —on equal terms —and will thrive: like, say Canada. SENORA Even as we stand here, we are all members of one, MENDEZ great country. AMBASSADOR (Grinning) Yes. With one common enemy. Your people. 31 A great commotion from off— in the distance. Gunfire, shouts. GENERAL My men were waiting for the rest of the villagers to return home from the fields. Shall we see what's hap pened? Pow, pow, pow! The AMBASSADOR, SENORA MENDEZ, and the GENERAL step out for a look. The PRESIDENT kneels before the altar and begins to pray. CHRIST steps down from the cross. MARY rises. They circle quietly behind the PRESIDENT. MARY takes off the rope which was around the waist of her robe, throws it round the PRESIDENT'S neck, and pulls. The PRESIDENT grabs the rope around his neck, and tries to break free — remaining on his knees. CHRIST stands before him. CHRIST Listen: Thou shalt not kill. PRESIDENT Traitors! CHRIST Love thy neighbor as thyself. PRESIDENT Communist! CHRIST Listen: Those who are first shall be last, and the last shall be first. PRESIDENT Marxist! Bookworm!! Student!!! CHRIST Listen: It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. PRESIDENT I know who you work for! Let go, damn it! MARY The people are hungry, they need food. . . CHRIST How many loaves do you have? PRESIDENT All we have is coffee here! He stops struggling. Please! Please, stop! I've been wrong. I know that now. Nothing is too degrading for me. Leave me here on the floor, to face my sins . . . face to face with . . . ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^M 32 CHRIST I'm not finished yet: Which of these laws have you obeyed? Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not commit adultery . . . PRESIDENT Adultery! Never, I swear. . . CHRIST Thou shalt not bear false witness. Thou shalt not commit fraud. PRESIDENT Ah, God above only knows. I'm an utter wretch, miserable to the last penny in at least one of my bank accounts. I'm wounded. . . wounded to the heart! MAR Y lets the rope go. The PRESIDENT crawls on all fours. What have I done? I've let those filthy trainers whip my prize stallions. Will the animal kingdom ever forgive me? CHRIST Listen: Go and sell all you possess, and give it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven. PRESIDENT Yes, yes. There are a few things I've been meaning to get rid of anyway. One's life should be uncluttered by material possessions. I see it now. In that sense I am one with all the poor. Material possessions are of no help to any of us. The poor have already renounced all of their material possessions —and so must I. Except for the bare necessities any individual needs for running a country. What pleasure does a man draw from unlimited air and limousine service and the like anyway? Forgive me! That's what I ask of the wide open sky above the swaying palms of my farm. That's what I ask of my own lands which lie beneath my feet. Yes, yes —I see it! We shall start again. We shall create a new order based upon private initiative, the social good, voluntary poverty and animal welfare! PRESIDENT The GENERAL has entered, unnoticed by the PRESIDENT, who is still down on all fours. CHRIST and MARY stare at the GENERAL. A silence. CHRIST and MARY walk silently past the GENERAL and off. Yes. . . we have all become cynics here. We must 33 repent, and create a new future. He stands, straightens his tie. Then he sees the GENERAL, who has been observing him. Oh. Hello Umberto. The General shoots him. GENERAL Pow!!! The PRESIDENT falls. SENORA MENDEZ, the AMBASSADOR, and the PRIEST—who looks haggard and defeated—return. GENERAL A public announcement! Ladies and gentlemen: I wish to report that I have replaced the president — because of the urgent political situation —until open and democratic elections can be held. AMBASSADOR This won't wash in the Oval Office. There'll be hell to pay. GENERAL The armed forces have found that the former president was too conciliatory with our sworn enemies. He was known to be experiencing pangs of conscience. He has therefore been replaced, and I have accepted, with regret, the difficult task of cleaning out the rebels, the red ants that are sucking the life out of our country — so that genuine and lasting democracy can come at last. SENORA MENDEZ Stirring, General. Viva! PRIEST Ants . . . ? AMBASSADOR General, you sure don't make life easy. But if that's your program, I'll see what I can do for you. (He thinks.) Yes, but we'll need a pretext. Something to convince the fans back home that our assistance is a necessary evil. SENORA MENDEZ Hasn't something. . . changed here? ALL look around. She points to the empty cross. It's empty. i 34 GENERAL You are a remarkably observant woman, Senora. PRIEST (With head bowed) We were to have performed the Passion today . . . AMBASSADOR Yes, Senora. You're right. Wasn't there someone up there before, Father? The PRIEST remains silent, slowly shaking his head. Oh, I get it. Now you're missing one of the parts for your little play. Well, I don't claim to know much about these things —but couldn't you step up there and play the part yourself, Padre? PRIEST I don't belong "up there." I belong down here. With them. He goes. AMBASSADOR What do you mean by that? Padre! There'll be hell to pay with your superiors! Pause. He's gone. GENERAL Wait a minute. The GENERAL goes to the cross, steps up on it, and with a broad smile, hangs his arms over the cross-beam. How do I look? SENORA (Clapping her hands) Dashing, sir! Dashing! Oh, Gen- MENDEZ eral —you are a devil! AMBASSADOR Get down from there! You'll be seen! This is most embarrassing. GENERAL GENERAL Mr. Ambassador. You have no sense of humor. A commotion offstage. Shots are fired. The AMBASSADOR throws SENORA MENDEZ on the ground, and throws himself on top of her. It's those rebel officers again! 35 Suddenly, the PRESIDENT jumps up from the floor and shoots the GENERAL. PRESIDENT Pow! Pow! The GENERAL'S head slumps over. He remains on the cross. A silence. The AMBASSADOR and SENORA MENDEZ slowly rise. AMBASSADOR You're still alive, Miguel? PRESIDENT Alive as ever, Micky. Lucky for me, he never could hit the side of a tank from two steps away. He was one person that my invisible legions wouldn't dare tamper with —so I came prepared. God helps those who help themselves. SENORA It's so good to see you alive, Sefior President! Thank MENDEZ God you've come back to protect us. I knew every thing would come out all right in the end! PRESIDENT Yes. I have been truly reborn today, in every sense of the word. And with my rebirth comes that of our country. With the General gone, I can now declare free and open elections for Easter in five years' time — for you know, don't you, Micky, that it was only the General and his breed that have stood in the way of social reforms. AMBASSADOR (Gazing up at the GENERAL on the cross) But you know — I'm thinking that. . . maybe he can still be of use to us. PRESIDENT You mean . . . AMBASSADOR Yes. A martyr. There's no reason why —in his present state — he can't retain his post as Chairman of the Committee for National Resurrection. All you really need is a figurehead. And when the fans back home hear about the General's fate, they'll let us do more than send advisors. It's clear that you can't remain unmoved in the face of all this spiraling violence. Yes, now is the time to act. Our boys have been hamstrung by restraints for too long. Public opinion in my country has held them down, but they want badly to get out on the field and do what's right. Now, I'd say 36 PRESIDENT PRIEST MARY we've got what we need to get them out of the dugout. Senora —your country is about to enter the major leagues. And we'll win out, because we're the team with the fire power. Yes, the moment has arrived: The moment of the moral imperative! Senora, your arm. Miguel, let's get back to the capital. Tomorrow we meet the press. Let's have an early dinner. The AMBASSADOR and SENORA MENDEZ go out. Sorry, Umberto. But you knew the rules of the game. I promise you, as a friend, your name will not be forgotten. The PRIEST and MAR Y enter. They carry the dead body of CHRIST, now dressed as a VILLAGER. They stop when they see the PRESIDENT. The PRESIDENT regards them briefly, then exits. They step up onto the platform and lay the VILLAGER (CHRIST) before the cross. This has got to see an end. He sees the GENERAL on the cross. My God. They seem to go on forever. One gets pushed down and another one springs up. The thing that props them up is the cross we bear. The thing that supports them, that's what we must get rid of. PRIEST The thing that props them up . get rid of. Pause. But can it be done? that's what we must A drum beats. The actors on stage remove their masks. The other actors return in time to the drums, holding their masks. They disperse over the stage. The drums stop. The actress playing MARY gestures with her hand to the DEAD VILLAGER in the center. The others will do the same as they join the chorus. The actress playing MARY announces: 37 THE DEAD VILLAGER'S REQUEST THE ACTRESS PLAYING MARY I... I was born like many others In a village of men And the older I grew The farther I learned to wander The more I saw The more I wanted to learn And I wanted my village to grow THE ACTOR PLAYING THE PRIEST They came to my village They closed me in with fences They took the fruit of my toil Leaving me hunger and thirst ALL They took my hope of learning Which is also a hunger and a thirst PRIEST/ ACTOR They offered me rewards To betray others in the village ALL They took my breakfast And gave me fear instead THE ACTOR PLAYING THE GENERAL Took my brother off And put him in a uniform ALL Took his sense of shame And made him consent to be my killer WOMEN Took my first child at birth And eventually took my growing children Whom I was sworn to protect And so they took my dignity ALL And now the time has come When I say no — My village wants to grow MARY/ ACTRESS You. . . You must not come here Once again With powder and with lead ~~—^^^^-^^^^^^^^—^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 38 Powder and lead Do not mix well with human flesh They leave it white and bled Do not let your sons Or neighbors march here In this mud so often Trampled down before They will sink in that mud And the pain they make while marching Will stick to their boots and soles PRIEST/ Do not come knocking ACTOR With the bayonet ALL For I have answered the door For too many bayonets PRIEST/ My shirt and coat are torn ACTOR I am run through with holes From all those times ALL Those bayonets, those guns Those tanks, those ships That lead and powder have come banging on the door THE ACTOR But if you come knocking with your hand PLAYING THE You will be welcome at our door AMBASSADOR Come differently Than your parents came before WOMEN Come with hope, respect, and trust Come with blankets, if you've some to spare ALL Come understanding That we must change to rise from dust And you cannot stop a river or a storm MARY/ Come differently ACTRESS Than your parents came before. 39 Marie Under THE MOON OF THE DEAD The tree groans under the moon's weight. Full of blood. The swollen river gets fatter. As if up from the sauna stones The enormous river's mouth roars. Listen, hear it! More voices grow from everywhere; In the mouth, with hell heaving into it, Fear and terror are truly there. Hope crushed from these lands by loss. Listen, hear it! Orphans weeping, widows weeping, And the farmhands and the servant girls, The raped virgin's cry a curse. The exterminating cross Turned windmill. There where, for all we know, leg bones are hanging And surely corpses are dangling. Blood become water, the heart chill. Spirit, did you evaporate Away leaving nothing but moans? On the right hand, on the left hand, Beneath the mound, mounting the cloud, Behind the stars, did you not fit? Was it decreed that it must be barren Between the sky and the land? Is there somewhere a place where the two of us can find shelter? Listen, hear it! Fingers play, failing, hollow-voiced, Brittle, spindling, Plucking the past into the wind From the harp of rib bones. 40 Is it the spirit's cry we hear, Perhaps a cry for help from where One is abandoned in the dirt? It has come to oppress us all. Listen, hear it! Even the cow bellows from her Corner of the barn — Does the nightmare also tread over Her raw muzzle, lightning flashing From the blade of the slaughter ax? Is that the butcher's grin offering Itself from the door's dawning cracks? The well-fed werewolf's stench having Limped from the woods nearby? Maybe. Is it only The chestnut-checkered cow in the pain of calving? But what do we know of the beast? And yet, and yet, in the night We all pour forth from one stream, As if from one mouth, we all moan. For even the dead are not dead. But exiled. On every neck the same bell Cries through the flesh, through the bone, To the shepherd and toward home. Listen, listen. translated from the Estonian by T. H. lives and Wayne Holder 4i Roberto Juarroz / Three Poems from "Seventh Book of Vertical Poetry" LOVE BLEEDS Love bleeds On the back of its own penalty, While a telegram god Races along the filaments of madness. A dissecting instrument Climbs up to the pinnacle of courtesy While the cover of a black book Shuts on the night's failure. The stray gestures Of a shattered ceremonial Corner the last symbol. Meanwhile the tears Have turned into quarrels, Leveling the signs of the zodiac And the tops of tombs as well. A flower breaks a glass, The glass breaks a table, The table breaks a tree And the tree folds up its branches like an umbrella So that no one else will make fun again Of its unbelievable disregard. 42 MEANWHILE I KEEP MAKING MY WORD Meanwhile I keep making my word, The one I have never found Among all the lost things that I collect. I keep making my word like a dream Inventing itself a voice, Like a bird carrying off its nest, Like a shadow hugging its body So they may not later be separated by the night. I keep making my word To have a place in which to be silent When the river dries up that now runs Like a false guarantee between my lips. (For Laura, again) 43 EVERY WORD CALLS UP ANOTHER Every word calls up another. Every word is a verbal magnet, A pole of variable attraction Forever inaugurating new constellations. One word is all language, But it is the foundation as well Of all of language's transgressions, The basis on which an antilanguage is always affirmed. One word is still a man. Two words are already the abyss. One word can open a door. Two words erase it. translated from the Spanish by Louis Bourne. 44 Machado de Assis Introduction to THE MOST SERENE REPUBLIC Machado de Assis' curious little fable appeared in 1882. It created no stir on first publication and has been forgotten since. Although its concerns are derived from specifically Brazilian attitudes to life and society, it poses questions demanding resolution at all times and in all societies: What is the nature of Authority and how are its sources made accessible to all for the renewal of all? Looking at nineteenth-century Brazil, Machado was aware that his country had produced no intelligences of the caliber of Darwin, Wallace or Spencer; he knew its world-view was insufficiently empiric and still drew sustenance from transplanted European Catholic dogmatism purveying a pseudo-universal metaphysics. Suspicious still of science and empirical data, the Brazilian mind sought to reconcile the old unverifiable metaphysics with the dynamism of the new applied sciences. But the uneasy mingling of the two produced a sterile, half-way mentality tending to authoritarian intervention rather than detached scrutiny. Thus the powers of cleric and caudillo were reinforced. And so they remain to the present in Brazilian and other South American cultures. To convey the process and dramatize the problem, Machado invents Canon Vargas, a theologian-scientist and metaphysician-philologist. He presents him reading a paper at what seems a confusion of scientific congress and nationalistic press conference. By the words he utters the Canon reveals his own attitudes and, by inference, uncovers the consciousness of a whole people. The Most Serene Republic Canon Vargas' Conference Gentlemen: Before informing you of a discovery that may bring our country fame, I must first thank you for having come to this meeting. I know a spirit of noble scientific enquiry brings you; but I am not unaware —and I would be foolish to ignore it—that some self-interest tempers your legitimate scientific curiosity. I can only hope I may respond to both motivations. 45 My discovery is not recent; it dates from the end of 1876. I did not announce it publicly then and, not being like the daily newspaper of this capital city, I have not yet divulged it —for a reason you will soon appreciate. My work still lacks the final touches — certain verifications and supplementary experiments. Our daily newspaper, however, on one occasion reported that an English scientist had discovered a phonetic language of insects and referred to an experiment conducted with flies. I immediately wrote to Europe and anxiously awaited a reply on the matter because I am keen to secure scientific recognition for my own country. So, at this conference, I proclaim loudly to the whole world that before this European experiment took place, a non-British scientist, a humble naturalist, had made a comparable discovery and conducted several astonishing experiments. Gentlemen, I shall surprise you, as Aristotle would have been surprised had someone asked him: Do you think it is possible to communicate social structure to spiders? Aristotle would have replied in the negative, as would all of you; it is scarcely possible to believe that this particular solitary creature, scarcely disposed to work, a tiny being so hard to understand, could succeed in fashioning a social organization. However, I have attained this impossibility. I hear a laugh among your curious whispers. Gentlemen, I shall overcome your prejudices. The spider appears inferior because you don't know him. You love the dog, you like cats and hens and you don't notice that the spider neither bounces nor barks like a dog, does not meow like a cat, cackle like a hen, buzz or bite like a mosquito and does not even shed our blood or disturb our rest like a flea. Surely it is these creatures that should be regarded as perfect models of idleness and parasitism. Even the ant, so noteworthy for some attributes, affects our sugar plantations and secures his property by robbing others. But the spider, gentlemen, does not afflict or rob us; it captures our enemies the flies, spins, weaves a web, works, and dies. What better example of patience, order, foresight, respectability and humaneness? As for its talents, there are no two opinions. From Pliny to Darwin, naturalists the world over have formed one chorus of admiration for this creature whose patiently fashioned web your servant's careless broom destroys in an instant. If time permitted, I would repeat the judgements of these men; but my own material presses and I must abbreviate my references to others. But I have their work here —not all, but almost all; among others, I have this excellent book by Buchner who with great skill has studied the psychology of spiders. By quoting Darwin and Buchner I express my deepest admiration for two men of the highest ability without, however, in any way endorsing (and my clerical dress proclaims my faith) their frank and erroneous materialism. Gentlemen, I discovered a new species of spider which can speak; I collected several and gave them a distinctive social organization. I saw 46 the first of these marvellous creatures on 15 December 1876. It was so large and brightly coloured, with reddish back and blue transverse stripes, so fast in its movements — almost frolicsome — that it engaged my complete attention. The following day I saw three more and carried them to a secluded corner of my farm. I scrutinized them for a long time and grew to admire them. But nothing can compare with my excitement on discovering they possessed a spider language —a language, gentlemen, rich and varied in its own grammatical structure with verbs, conjugations, declensions, cases, onomatopoeic functions — a language I began to study for the benefit of science as well as to make use of for my private purposes. And I mastered the language, overcoming the most extraordinary difficulties with patience. I lost heart at least twenty times; but the love of science gave me strength to continue; I may add, this task could not be accomplished twice in the lifetime of one person. I shall keep for another occasion a technical description of the new species and an analysis of its language. My objective at this conference is to assert the rights of Brazilian science against European science and to draw attention to the greater reputation my own work should have. I shall now demonstrate this claim and I call for your careful concentration. In one month I had collected twenty spiders, in the following month another fifty-five, and, in March 1877, I counted four hundred and ninety. Two main influences combined to bring them together in this way: the use of their language insofar as I was able to comprehend it, and the feeling of terror which I communicated to them. My height, the cut of my clothes and the use of their language convinced them I was a spider-god, and they tended to worship me. You will see later the benefits resulting from this belief. Also, as I followed their movements with much careful scrutiny, jotting in a notebook the observations I made, they imagined that the book was a record of their sins and they seemed to become rapidly stronger in the practice of their virtues. A flute was also a great help; as you know, or ought to know, they are very fond of music. It was not enough to make social beings of them — it was important to give them a suitable government. I hesitated in the choice; several types of government appeared good, some excellent, but all had against them their contemporary existence. Let me explain. An existing form of government is exposed to comparisons which may be odious. It was important for me either to find a completely new form or to restore an abandoned form. Naturally I adopted the second alternative and nothing seemed more appropriate than a republic of the same type as the Venetian Republic. It was obsolete and so there could be no comparison in its general features with any existing form of government; it would provide also a complicated system which would test the political aptitude of the young society. 47 A further motive determined my choice. Among the differing electoral modes of ancient Venice there was the ballot-bag system which had been initiated by the sons of the nobility in the service of the State. They put ballot slips bearing the names of candidates into the bag and drew annually a certain number, making the elected person immediately available for public service. This method may perhaps provoke laughter in those who doubt the value of elections, but this did not influence my choice. In my opinion, the method eliminated the uncertainties of passion, gross ineptitude and the growth of corruption and greed. But it was not simply for these reasons that I adopted the system; I also had the idea that, as I was dealing with a people so capable in spinning webs, the use of the ballot-bag would be a simple adaptation for them to make — almost a natural growth of daily habit. The proposal was accepted. The name "The Most Serene Republic" appeared to them magnificent, resonant and appropriate for ennobling their common efforts. I shall not say, gentlemen, my experiment attained perfect results or that I achieved any success in a short space of time. My pupils were not Campanella's children of the sun or Sir Thomas More's Utopians; they formed a new people who were not able to arrive at once at the summit of achievement attained by some of the secular nations. When the time is ripe other peoples may give way to them —people who will carry out more than mere theories on paper which prove invalid in practice. I can assure you that, despite uncertain beginnings, my people went on to develop many virtues I consider essential for the well-being of a State. One inhabitant, in particular, I may add, showed great perseverance—the perseverance of a Penelope. In effect, when the people understood the electoral act constituted the base of public life, they tried to perform the function with the greatest attention. The making of the ballot-bag was a national undertaking. It was to be five inches high and three inches wide, sewn with the finest thread —a good, neat job. Ten of the principal ladies of the State were commissioned to make it and they received the honorary title "Mothers of the Republic" as well as other privileges and rights. Electoral procedure was simple. A public official with the name "Inscriptor" wrote the names of candidates who fulfilled certain conditions on ballot-slips. On election day the slips were put in the bag and drawn out by the official in charge of Extractions to the total number required for admission to the Assembly. But what had been an elementary process in Venice served here to provide many complications. Elections became regular occurrences; but before long, one of the legislators declared there had been unfair practice in that two slips with the name of the same candidate had been put in the electoral bag. The Assembly was able to verify the truth of this allegation and decreed that the bag, which until then had been three inches wide, should be reduced by two inches; by limiting the area of the bag the possibility of fraud- 48 ulent activity would also be limited —which was the same thing as suppressing it. But it happened that at the next election a candidate's name was omitted from the ballot-slip and it was not determinable whether this was carelessness or deliberate intent on the part of the public official. He stated he couldn't remember having seen the honourable candidate but added, magnanimously, that it was not impossible the name had been submitted but had afterwards been accidentally omitted. However there was, of course, no question of deliberate intent in the oversight. The Assembly, in the face of this insoluble psychological problem, was unable to punish the official; but bearing in mind that the bag's narrowness could cause harmful exclusions, the Assembly revoked the earlier law and restored the width to three inches. Meantime, gentlemen, it happened that the first magistracy became vacant and three leading citizens presented themselves as candidates for election. The two most important, Hazeroth and Magog, were the leaders of the Rectilinear and Curvilinear Parties. I must explain these terms. They are geometrical in origin for it is geometry which divides the political parties of the Republic. The Rectilinear Party holds that the spider should make his web with straight strands; others think to the contrary that webs should be fashioned from curved strands, and that is the view of the Curvilinear Party. There is, additionally, a third Party, mixed and centralist, which proposes: webs should be made of both straight and curved strands, and this is the Recto-Curvilinear Party; besides, there is a fourth political grouping, an Anti-Recto-Curvilinear Party, which denies the claims of all the other principal parties and proposes using webs made of air, thus giving a light and transparent effect in which no designs of any particular type are apparent. As geometry alone would scarcely suffice to keep the people divided and thus deprive them of a sense of political commitment, each party has adopted a symbol. For one party a straight line expressed good sentiments—justice, honesty, integrity, constancy, and so on, as distinct from base or inferior sentiments, such as flattery, fraud, disloyalty and perfidy, which were represented by perfect curves. Opponents of this belief responded in a contrary fashion: the curved line represented virtue and wisdom, because it expressed modesty and humility; and ignorance, presumption, stupidity and affected valour were straight — perfectly straight — lines. The third Party, less angular and less exclusive, improved on the exaggerations of the others, combined their contrasts, and proclaimed the congruence of all lines as being an exact copy of the physical and moral world. The fourth Party limited itself to denying everything. Neither Hazeroth nor Magog was elected. Their names were actually drawn from the bag, but the election was declared null and void —in Hazeroth's case for omission of the first letter of his name, and in Magog's case for omission of the last letter. The name which triumphed on this occasion was that of an ambitious and wealthy person, though politically obscure, who thus came to occupy a prominent position, to 49 the general astonishment of the whole Republic. But the defeated were not content to rest under the laurels of the victor; they demanded an enquiry. The enquiry revealed that the official in charge of inscriptions had deliberately changed the spellings of the two names. The official confessed his crime and guilt, but he explained the matter by saying it was a case of simple ellipsis; the "crime", if such it was, was purely a literary matter; and it is not part of the legal code to prosecute for errors in orthography or figures of speech. But events had shown it was now necessary to revise the electoral law once again. That very day a decree was issued stating that the bag would be refashioned so that it would have a net covering, through which the electoral slips could be read by the public and, ipso facto, by the candidates themselves; this openness would allow time to correct any errors. Unfortunately, gentlemen, the operation of this amendment became a continual source of trouble. The same open door to loyalty served the cunning of a certain Nabiga who connived with the official in charge of extractions to gain a seat in the Assembly. There was one place and three candidates; the official felt for the ballots with his eyes on an accomplice who shook his head in the negative until the ballot-slip in the Extractor's grasp was his. Nothing more was required to condemn the idea of the net. The Assembly, with exemplary patience, restored the thick covering of the previous bag; but, to prevent other grammatical errors, decreed to allow the validity of ballots whose orthography might be inexact, provided five persons swore on oath that the name written on the slip was the name of the candidate. But this new amendment gave rise to a new and unexpected situation. It was necessary to elect an inspector of taxes — a functionary commissioned with the task of collecting public revenues under the guise of voluntary subscriptions. Among the candidates were Caneca and Nebraska. A mistake was certainly made in the omission of the final letter from the latter's name; but five witnesses swore that the elected person was the one and only Nebraska so well-known in the Republic. The matter appeared to be cleared up until Caneca requested permission to prove that the successful ballot did not bear Nebraska's name but his own. A justice of the peace agreed to listen to the petition. A famous philologist — at that time the most renowned in the Republic as well as being a good metaphysician and not a mere geometrician — was brought in to prove the case; and he did so in the following way: "In the first place," he stated, "the omission of the final letter from Nebraska's name was not accidental. Why should it have been written this way? One cannot argue it was from fatigue or through love of brevity, since the missing letter was a plain, straightforward 'a'. Was it lack of space? No —you can see for yourselves there is room for two or three syllables. Therefore, the error must be intentional — it cannot be otherwise, having the intention as it were or drawing the reader's attention to the letter,'k', the last simple, solitary letter written. Now, by a mental 50 process which is undeniable, the letter 'k' is reproduced in the mind in two different ways —the way it is written and the way it is sounded; 'k' is the same as 'ca'. The mistake, therefore, in the name as it is written attracts the reader's eye to the final letter, thus forming in the mind the first syllable 'ca'. Then, the natural movement of the mind is to read the whole name; so the eye goes back to the beginning —to the initial 'ne' of the name 'Nebraska' and forms the syllables 'cane.' There remains the middle syllable, 'bras', the reduction of which to the syllable 'ca', the last syllable of the name 'Caneca', is more easily demonstrable than the existence of the external world itself. I shall not prove this exhaustively, having perceived in you a lack of the necessary preparation for comprehending the spiritual and philosophical significance of this syllable —its origins and growth, meanings, semantic changes, logical and syntactical causes, deductive and inductive, symbolic and otherwise. So, accepting this as demonstrated, the final proof is self-evident and absolutely clear from my opening premise: by the addition of the first syllable 'ca' to the two syllables 'ca-ne' there is formed the name 'Caneca.'" The electoral law was amended, gentlemen, abolishing all testimonial and interpretative proof of candidates and their names, and introducing a further innovation — immediate shortening of the ballot-bag's height by one half inch and narrowing its width by another half inch. Even this, however, did not prevent a further small abuse in the election of mayors, and the bag was restored to its original dimensions, although it was now given- a new triangular shape. You will appreciate that this, too, provided further complications; many ballot-slips were left in the bottom of the bag. Reform was instituted by making a cylindrical bag; later, it was given the shape of an hour-glass, which was unfortunately rather similar to the triangle; then the Assembly adopted the form of a half-moon, and so on. Many abuses, careless or deliberate, began to disappear and the future promises well —perhaps not for complete success, as perfection is not of this world; but it bodes well in terms of the advice given by one of the most esteemed citizens of my Republic, Erasmus, whose most recent discourse I can only regret I am unable to convey to you in its entirety. Having been given the duty of informing the ten ladies entrusted with refashioning the electoral bag as required by the latest legislative amendment, Erasmus told them the story of Penelope who made and unmade her famous fabric while awaiting the return of her husband Ulysses. "You are the Penelopes of our Republic," he told them, in conclusion; "You have the same purity, patience and talent. Refashion the bag, my dear friends, refashion the bag, until Ulysses, weary of stretching his legs in distant places, comes among us once more to take the place which is his. Ulysses is Wisdom." translated from the Spanish by Colin Partridge 51 Osip Mandelstam /Four Poems 367- Armed with the narrow vision of wasps, sucking the earth's axis, the earth's axis, I recall everything I have seen and remember it by heart. . but in vain. I don't paint. I don't sing or draw a black-voiced bow across a violin. I only sink my teeth into life. I admire the artful strength of the wasp. If only I could someday transcend sleep and death, and stand in summer's warmth to feel the sting of air, to hear the earth's axis, the earth's axis. . . 52 235- (to Anna Akhmatova) Preserve my words forever for their aftertaste of misfortune and smoke, for the pitch of circular patience, for the honest tar of work. Water in the Novgorod wells must be sweet and black so that by Christmas it reflects a seven-finned star. And in return, father-friend, rough helper, I — the unknown brother, the renegade in the family of man — promise to build a well with such thick timbers that Tartars could lower princes in the bucket. If only these ancient executioner's blocks loved me! In the garden, nine-pins fall as if the players were aiming at death itself. For that I'll spend the rest of my life in an iron shirt and like Peter the Great, I'll find an executioner's ax in the woods. 53 173 Let the clock wheeze and strike in the stuffy room- tufts of gray cotton and bottles of acid, great footsteps with the hinges removed — through blurred memory ghosts come to life. Anguish torments the feverish patient: skinny fingers twist thin braids of hair, he wrings his handkerchief as if it were an amulet, and he stares hatefully at the minutes. . . It was September, the weathervane spinning, shutters banging —the wild games of giants and children seemed prophetic. At first his delicate body rose easily. Then it fell. In the middle of the motley courtyard a living carousel turns without music. 54 394 With a sweet, uneven step she limps over the empty earth, almost passing her faster girlfriend and a boy of similar age. The confining freedom of her handicap drives her on, but the question in her step seems to hold her back — something about this spring weather, how mother earth, under a funereal sky, perpetuates the cycle. Some women are native to the damp earth, their every step is resonant sobbing, their calling—to accompany the dead and greet the resurrected. To demand kindness from them is criminal. To leave them is unbearable. Today an angel, tomorrow a worm in the grave, and the day after, only an outline. What was once a step is beyond us. Flowers never fade, the sky is whole, and what will be. . . is only a promise. translated from the Russian by Michael Cole and Karen Kimball 55 George Faludy SONNET NINE Wearing the dagger of youth, its flowered shirt of violence, you are so slender, beautiful, so wild and strong, how can I find you out under your masks? I love, and you rebel; I don't love and you run. What can I offer? I'd kill to stop you leaving me alone on this terrestrial journey. Yet I face terror if you go out in the morning or, at noon, fall silent, or at dusk choose to stay sitting on your rock of solitude. Still, at night I can step to your bedside, the pale moon gleaming. Your face is utter whiteness as you sleep; your shoulders' marble pulses; lions meet at the rivulets of your biceps and drink deep. 56 SONNET SIXTY-THREE Giovanni Pico Delia Mirandola Purple-robed beneath a tower of memories, you stand poised. Aesthetics are your ethic. Mere earth can't drag you down. The Universe it is that weighs on your shoulders as you look for harmony in philosophies, creeds, atoms, trying out your alchemical formulae before the Gate of the Mysteries, as women leap into the deep tarn of your beauty. Soul and body, that human symbiosis, more turbulent in you than anyone, you come from far away into our memories. You're far away now. A confessional stands before your memorial plague. We long to crawl beside you in that yellow wall. 57 SONNET THIRTY-SEVEN The sea washed up an amphora. The Princess, unable to lift it, sat crying on the sand and prayed until a Djinn on a white horse arrived and, for a coin, took home her find. Here we live where the Mediterranean ends at the Atlantic. You found an old oil lamp from Carthage when you first stepped on this sand, and all you had to do was pick it up. How many ships sailed here and sank within this grey sea that floated up their dead while the jugs, the gold, the chests of iron sank to the bottom and were coralled thick for two millenia on the ocean bed. The sea's a strange girl. Now she slides them back. rendered in English by Robin Skelton 58 Gaston Miron/7ii>0 Poems from "Courtepointes" FRAGMENT OF THE VALLEY Country of jointures and fractures valley of Archambault narrow as the hips of a skinny woman diamond-land clarity echoes like concealed birds on your coarse slopes the secular curvature of men against the stony face of mountainous Springs turning from them I free myself from the long laggard prostration of fathers in the lightening nocturnal root the firmament rears and from crest to crest veers the crow on clumsy wings a beacon's moving voice 59 OLD OSSIAN Certain winter nights, when, outside, as of late space is carried here and there with the undertow of branches, with streets, barricades of snowswirls, then, at times, with large craters of emptiness at the end of a capsized wind dead, night falls in the snow itself houses journey each on their own and I hear in the intimacy of duration and firmly holding the plows blind old Ossian who is singing in the radar translated from the French by Dennis Egan 60 Jiri Klobouk excerpts from The Music Teacher Part I I'll never forget my first look out of my new window with its view of Uphill Street. The four walls I built for myself in the attic weren't then and aren't now a real apartment in the sense that well-off people would use the word, nor the type you would see in illustrated magazines. Whenever I need to get a drink of water, wash or go to the toilet, I have to go down to the next floor to a red-tiled and green-walled corridor and through one of the doors to a bathroom with a toilet and a cracked mirror. If I want to take a proper bath, I have to light a fire under the boiler and then often wait a whole hour and a half. I usually plan my bath for a Sunday, when no students come, and I can lie in bed contemplating theories, mostly about music, but I've also started a book in German, though I've forgotten a great deal of the language. The day thus begun, I get up and have breakfast, which is usually something simple. Most often I eat a crust of rye bread, either with marmalade or just broken up and dunked in my coffee. In the meantime, I keep an ear open for the bathroom downstairs to become free. When it does I have to race down there like a scared rabbit, otherwise some more alert bunny will hop in and leave his droppings right on the floor. Sometimes this game begins early in the morning and lasts all day, and you can imagine how aggravating it is losing all that time being on constant lookout. The people who live across the corridor have the biggest advantage, of course. But do you call this civilized living? When I finally make it and lock the door behind me with as many turns of the key as possible, I figure I have basically won and I lean against the door, breathing victoriously, like Bivoj from the "Old Czech Tales", after doing battle with the boar. The last time I was there I got myself all lathered up, but when I turned the shower handle for the second time, no water came. The soap on me was drying, the bubbles were rapidly shrinking, my body was being eaten by acid. At least that's how I imagined it, that it was sinking into my pores. I ran out into the hall and was roaring with pain like a wounded rhinoceros, when suddenly behind me I heard the water begin 61 to splash out. Before I could get back to the washroom, though, someone much more agile than I had dashed in there and locked the door. I heard him showering with my hot water and singing, and I just stood there helplessly with my towel around my waist. What was I supposed to do? After all, I couldn't tear the door off its hinges and kill the person. So I went back upstairs and wailed and almost tore my skin in irritation. But there was nothing I could do about it, so I stopped swearing and consoled myself that I was at least home. In addition to this none-too-comfortable living style, it is impossible to do any serious cooking. Usually, I just bring something home and heat it up on my little stove, pre-cooked items and second-rate food from The Austrian's kitchen. Some of my students caught on to my meal situation quite early and once in a while would sneak in under their music sheets a stuffed pepper with tomato sauce in a pan, or something like that, and quite a bit of rice, which is what I like best. I don't even want to count how many buckets of coal I have carried up here from the cellar every winter, wondering if my limited allotment would last long enough for me to keep my little room reasonably well-heated. Most of my attic is taken up by my piano. And what a terrible problem I had getting it up here. Since motor vehicles are barred from Uphill Street, the movers had to make a special cart with rubber wheels on which five strong fellows pushed this monstrous and moribund behemoth, which they tastelessly referred to as "King Kong's corpse," up the hill like Sisyphus' stone, though in their case, needless to say, this esoteric comparison was replaced by a series of highly seasoned and racy expressions. I remember that day well, how first thing in the morning they struggled at the bottom of the street until they finally got the piano up onto the cart, and then the strongest of them, who was built like a horse, grabbed the thick rope and they moved off toward their goal. Runny-nosed kids, God knows where from, were jumping all around and whooping it up. All we needed was a drummer with cymbals or a clown with a trumpet to make it a full-fledged circus. A half-lame peddler with two sacks of potatoes on his back would have needed an hour to get up the hill, and even then he would have had to take at least two steps backwards for every one forward. But our moving expedition slogged up the hill all day and still they hadn't reached my building. These lads were in no rush to break their backs over the piano. As soon as they had dragged it from one doorway to the next, they would take a break, as if to show the whole world that this was work for animals, and if anyone had a different opinion, he was welcome to grab the rope himself and go to hell as far as they were concerned. They stopped off in the dairy store and slurped milk from a giant dipper, while the strongest one tossed down a raw egg, coughed a couple of times and launched into a simulation of an opera aria, something on the order of "Ridi, pagliaccio." His yowling made my ears hurt, and I thought what a blessing that my father didn't have to hear him. 62 Next came the butcher shop which had just gotten in some new sausage, and at one sitting the lads gulped down at least five yards, all of which I had to pay for, of course. But the expense wasn't the worst of it. I was utterly mortified at the behaviour of these gluttons, who kept pointing up at my window, where I was trying to make myself as inconspicuous as possible, as if wanting to emphasize how much of the struggle still lay ahead of them, and that I bore total responsibility for the awesome weight of the object they were transporting. They took their longest break in The Austrian's Tavern. I was afraid they wouldn't get out of there until after dark. But finally they staggered out just as the tower clock struck seven-thirty. I had been waiting up in my garret the whole day without food and drink, half-dead with anxiety about my piano. I was certain, of course, that I would have made them really furious if I had run down to the street and tried to improve their performance by staring at them or making inappropriate comments from the sidewalk. Such audacity would surely have earned me a sock in the head or a good kick in the rear. They would teach me that everybody has a right to his own natural tempo, and that it isn't a good idea to bug people. So I tried to calm myself with the thought that, after all, there was plenty of time and what doesn't get done today can be done tomorrow. But it was hard to keep calm. I had bought my first grand piano, and who wouldn't have been half-crazy with happiness at that? My old piano, almost eaten by mice and infested with moths, had been hauled away free of charge by a tuner who hadn't even thanked me for it. The movers finally reached my building after dark, and up through the shaft of the ascending stairwell came the sounds of stamping feet and heavy breathing from their exertions. The light bulbs in the corridor were on the blink, and every collision with some obstacle shook the six- story building to its foundations. There was very little room between the banister and the walls, and from the muffled talk below I gathered that these genial gentlemen were seriously considering leaving the "stupid old carcass" right where it was, completely blocking the stairs, and not coming back until tomorrow or, perhaps, not at all. Then the strongest proposed getting an axe and chopping off a piece here and there where necessary and, if that didn't work, they suggested in low voices, they would heave the "damned piece of junk" back down to the bottom of the stairs. With loud hoots they tried to imitate the beautiful boom it would make when it hit. Its insides would come out and that would be the end of all this fun. They were saying these things and I was almost in a dead faint, but I knelt down and, with my heart pounding, prayed that one of the Prague saints we have on practically every street corner would keep these fellows from doing anything drastic. And evidently I reached the right saint, because my precious instrument wasn't damaged at all, and none of the movers got hurt either. The gleaming surface of the grand piano didn't have a single scratch which couldn't be removed, and not one of the lads got a hernia or even a pulled muscle. Later, when I was 63 calmer, I realized that they were basically a jovial bunch of well- meaning fellows who were reacting with frightening gestures, obscene curses, and extravagant threats to the wrong they saw themselves as suffering by having to perform work that wasn't worthy of their intelligence and was, therefore, inhuman. I stammered my apologies for all the trouble I had caused and gave them the money they had coming and then some. In addition to paying the regular bill to the moving company and for what the lads had eaten and drunk all day, I tipped every one of them enough to keep him in beer for a month or, as the chunkiest one announced enthusiastically, as a result of my kind generosity he could now wag his finger at the most expensive prostitute hanging around the lobby of the poshest hotel in the capital. By the time they left, the moon had moved into a perfect position. It shone, giant and orange, just above the rooftops and brought tears to my eyes. The nearby tower clock struck again, this time for ten o'clock, and the fragrance of the neighboring gardens enveloped me with such intensity that I could have been lying on my back in the high grass in Derfle. From a distance too far to see in the dark I heard the honking of automobiles and the rumble of streetcars. For a moment I even imagined myself as a passenger in an airplane soaring above the Letna Plain loaded with people gripping lighted torches in their hands. My father was brimming with good health and spirits then, and taking real pleasure in my successes. There was nothing I wanted more than to have him here to share my sweet triumph as I sat with my head pressed against the black mahogany top of my grand piano as a victorious matador embraces the quivering body of his mortally wounded bull. And what would my mother think about all this? She would be standing at my window, criss-crossed by the nocturnal shadows from Uphill Street, waiting to see the uncommon beauty of a Prague morning. (The narrator has just returned from a visit to his parent's home some distance from Prague. . .) Part II Surrounded by the walls of my little garret room, or even during the train trip back to Prague, I thought about what a strange visit it had been. I felt deserted and unexpectedly beset by something. My music and my students left my mind and I made no effort to bring them back. I had no brothers or sisters and, suddenly, I asked why not; and without intending to, I conjured up for myself a blond sister. She was coming up the stairs to visit me, with two delightful, tousled-haired creatures in tow. She was young and beautiful, refined by motherhood, and suddenly I experienced a feeling of regret that we couldn't kiss in secret, 64 with no one watching us. So there was no doubt of the love I would have had for a sister, but what about a brother? What would he have looked like? And, to go on, what about friends? There had never been any lack of them, but as the years went by they disappeared to various remote places. Even if they hadn't left and were living right around the corner, though, I seriously doubted if I could have found enough time for walks along the river, sitting around on park benches or endless debating of international and domestic events in smoke-filled cafes. That definitely isn't my style, and it isn't difficult to guess how disconcerted I was when, about two weeks after my father's funeral, the mailman appeared in my attic with a registered letter for me. It was postmarked from my home town, but the neatly written address bore no resemblance to my mother's choppy handwriting. I sat down next to the window and tore open the envelope, but my astonishment persisted. This unknown person had filled several pages with his tidy penmanship, had called me his dear friend and had even signed himself Vladimir. But who was it, I asked myself, near desperation. I read sentence after sentence without omitting a word. From the first lines it was clear that my correspondent was an exceptionally talented observer. He didn't try to deal with my past in Derfle from A to Z. He obviously wasn't interested in that. He cleverly distinguished between the essential and the superfluous in my life, and the familiarity he showed with my childhood made a deep impression on me. From out of the blue he brought me face to face again with that picture hanging on the wall above the bed at home where I had fallen asleep so often. From that moment on, my unknown friend enjoyed my absolute trust. The snow-white bird sat on the spar of the sailboat and in the sea in the distance was the other boat and spars with similar birds sitting on them. It was a kind of inaccessible and anesthetized cross-section of space and time which I observed with enchanted eyes as I drifted through it. I was even ashamed that I couldn't recall anyone named Vladimir, but he asked me not to waste the time he presumed I would probably spend trying to solve this mystery. The only point of this letter, he explained to me, was to enable me to regain the emotional balance I had lost because of the departure of this person I had been so dependent on. Right at the beginning he remarked that he would much prefer us to meet personally which, by the way, he assumed would happen at my father's funeral. Since we didn't meet, however, he apologized and hoped I wouldn't be angry if he troubled me with this letter which contained a few perfunctory observations about the world, recorded at a moment when someone I loved so much was bidding his last farewell to it. It was a foggy morning, he said, or rather late forenoon, around eleven. My mother was trudging behind the coffin, head hung low, up the poplar-lined road, completely alone if we discount the twenty-five or thirty people shuffling along some distance away. When a few times she stumbled helplessly and almost fell into the ditch, it was he, Vladimir, 65 who jumped to her aid and then helped her make it the rest of the way to the cemetery safe and sound. The deeply dug hole had acquired a bit of underground water overnight and, as the gloomy throng stood there, three fighter planes flew overhead in close formation. The quiet then returned, interrupted by my mother's sobbing, the heartfelt words of the local minister and, finally, the sound of the clay earth and the faded bouquets of flowers striking the lid of the coffin. Why my father hanged himself remains a question no one has answered to this day. There was some conjecture that the day before he had had a physical examination during which the doctor had discovered that his body was gradually being consumed by some incurable disease. But it didn't seem likely that this brave and wise man would have given up the struggle before he began it. Since he died, Vladimir continued, whenever I walk along the dusty road where we used to run into each other so often, or in the middle of the fields and forests, and see something lying in front of me, such as the dried wing of a dragonfly, a pheasant's feather or a silent rock of a shape I've never seen before, I pick it up, turn it around in the palm of my hand and ask myself where I have been all my life, why haven't I noticed this beauty before, long before, when the rock was still revealing its secrets, the pheasant was still flapping its wings and the dragonfly was still skimming above surface of the pond. As soon as I finished reading the letter I sent mother a telegram to tell her I was coming Saturday afternoon. I looked out the window onto Uphill Street as if I'd awakened from a dream which was about nothing but deep sleep. I pressed my clasped hands between my knees and tried to understand my sluggishness, my unforgivable compulsion to remain idle and leave my mother to her loneliness and to all her thoughts about the emptiness to come. Outside the station building, where I usually found my blue-eyed father leaning against the wall, there was no one waiting for me. And yet this shortish man walked the whole way to Derfle with his arm around my shoulders. But I heard no one, no voice repeating the last sentence from the previous instalment of his continuous story. It was as if in the meantime someone had finished reading the book and put it back on the shelf among the others. When I reached the door my father's arm finally slid over my back, but I didn't see my mother in the kitchen. She was standing in her bedroom in front of the mirror with her nightgown on. I saw my telegram over by the window, unopened, jammed into a vase between some briars and dried branches broken off from a wild rosebush. It occurred to me that whoever had picked this thorny bouquet must have pricked his fingers and drawn blood. It was already five in the afternoon so I asked: "Are you just getting up, Mother?" "Of course not, Joseph," she answered, hiding her hands behind her back. "I'm just getting ready for bed." Then she pressed herself against me, so small that my fingers could hardly grasp her, like a little girl afraid she has done something bad. "Where's Brok?" she asked. I stroked her hair. My name wasn't Joseph, and Brok was my father's dog that had been 66 run over by a bus on the village square ten years ago. * * * (Much later the narrator travels on an overcrowded train to visit his mother once again.) Part III That eerie day did not end with my arrival in Kromeriz. Whole scenes from a Carnival procession materialized with me somewhere in the middle of the madhouse corridor. Ghastly-shaped masks bobbed up and down around me, rearing up right on the top of a darkened staircase, from behind the mountain of broken-up veneered office furniture, and then disappeared behind the nearest corner. It was complete hell, goose- pimples, as if I needed that. At least that's the way it seemed to me, suddenly finding myself in such a horrifying place. The medical personnel treated me politely, I'd have to say, please sit down here, or perhaps there, wherever you like. You're so tired you can hardly walk, what would you say to a cup of Turkish coffee or Chinese tea? We wonder if there's anything new in Prague. What do you expect there to be new, my dears, I thought, though, of course, I didn't say that to them. I hadn't seen my mother for God knows how long, and now, grimacing obligingly around me, they had nothing but obtrusive questions and comments about trivial matters. For about an hour they teased me with compliments, and I kept getting up and down as if I were sitting on thorns, until they finally made it obvious that I could not see the person I had come to see, because she was too dangerous. Who would have thought that they were talking about the mother who raised me? Certainly not I. So that I would not return completely frustrated they suggested that I could take a look at her through a section of wall made of special glass which prevented the patients from realizing that they were being observed. They kept remarking that I might well find myself gazing with repugnance into something like a giant aquarium or terrarium with a creature crawling on the floor, but they asked me not to hold it against them, they had no alternative. When I rejected this obscene offer, they tried to force me to look at my mother through some thick netting, as if I were watching a female orangutan at a zoo. She would be swinging on a used tire, and you could toss a banana into her cage, but as for letting my mother and me shake hands, embrace, or even get close enough just to look into each other's eyes, that was definitely out of the question. For the ape, even though she could peel the banana, could not return the skin to you. I was on my own and there were three of them, a nurse and two doctors, trying with all their might to convince me that they were in possession of a scientifically-based truth which no arguments of a mere 67 layman could refute. I asked for a cigarette, walked out into the corridor and leaned against the wall, smoking like a man bereft of his senses. It was a long time since I had been this way, acting like a balky child who is angry because he has not gotten his way. The cigarette made me a bit queasy, and my knees shook, but otherwise everything was the same as before. Finally, I felt I was on the verge of throwing up and I ran out into the garden for some fresh air. The building was completely smothered by vegetation. It had the untouched and dishevelled charm of estates one reads about only in old chronicles. I sat down on a bench in a position which kept the setting sun out of my eyes. It was no longer as hot as it had been in the train. I don't know much about flowers, but here they ran rampant in rich clusters, and the trees had the kind of bark which could be stripped off with your fingernails. The three-storied building of the mental institution was an oblong shape, and from where I sat I could see only the side wall with a barred window located about eight feet from the roof. There was no doubt that the north wind normally blew directly from the side where I was sitting and any builder could have told you why there were so few windows there, but by this time I had spotted my mother behind the bars. Her face was obscured by green ivy which stretched up from the ground and down from the roof and wound all around the iron window grating. I sprang up and strode down the sandy path. With legs wide apart and head cocked back, I stood there trying to take in every intimately known detail, even her wrinkles and her somewhat pointed ears. I could tell that she had gotten older from the gray in her hair, which blended into a whitish spot flitting from place to place behind the thick growth, following her movements. Vexed by the unusual motions I was making with my hands to shield my eyes, she yanked at the twisting vines until she tore some of the runners in two. Finally, a bit of daylight fell on her face. My throat contracted and, instead of the shout I expected, I released a sound like the gasp of a gravely injured motorcyclist, breathing his last on a highway next to the guard rail. My mother most likely saw me as some weird insect seeking shelter under the rotting leaves, and she expressed her horror in a shriek, which was shortly followed by another. For my part, I simply could not identify myself with this unsightly witch, whose tongue lolled around so helplessly in her mouth. Only her eyes still retained a spark of interest and seemed not to have changed at all. I found in them the tenderness and love which my mother had always heaped on me. I greeted her with a big wave. She pushed out a response which sounded like "Htsahurra- gruaa. . . . aa. . . ". Again she began to yank on the ivy, but her violent efforts soon tired her. "Mother," I said. "Do you realize who's come to visit you?" She nodded her head and clapped her hands together sharply, and the sound of two bones banging together scared a covey of birds out of a nearby bush. 68 Suniti Namjoshi/7it>o Poems CALL IT A PROCESS Inside the house the murderer handles a heavy hatchet, but she isn't hiding. She is open and familiar, may be seen in doorways, brushes past fast, indeed, once in a while, you eat together. And the instrument of murder is not obtrusive. It hangs on the wall or lies on the table. More often than not, it is nearly invisible. As for the murder, that climactic event, call it a process. Were it not for the pain and the skin and guts, it would be hard to prove that anything has happened. 69 THE FUR SEALS AS SHOWN ON TELEVISION A female of the species has strayed too far. Beachmaster bellows and staggers after her. Rolls of fat move oilily. I would like to laugh, but hold my breath and wait for what follows. Can't the female run? Perhaps the female does not wish to run? The announcer says, "The male of the species is four times as large, but females are seldom, if ever, hurt." Beachmaster hits her. It's a blow to the head. (She has such a sleek and beautiful head.) She goes down. With a casual flipper he stows her underarm and hauls her away. The rest is not shown. 70 Another long shot, another beachmaster: this one's beach is covered with water. "But nothing deters him." Proof is offered. He grabs a female. There's a noisy scuffle, and a sleek head forced underwater. The TV announcer is very excited. I feel bruised. My head hurts. 7i Jeni Couzyn / Three Poems THE MESSAGE The message of the men is linear. Like rapid pines they swarm upwards jostling for space mutilating their roots in the race sowing a shade so deep within their conquered space little else can grow and growth, they are shouting, growth. But the message of the women is love has always been love. It is the luminous shining under the substance opaque stickiness of pain and grief greyness of wanting, heaviness of getting. The saints knew it also the wisemen, the incarnations of God Christ, Buddha brought it as an astonishing revelation. But we were born knowing it. It is the circle of light we carry at the centre of our bodies knowing, and forgetting see with our eyes in visionary radiance when we give birth and lose and discover again season after season because we are orchard. 72 THE NAME OF GOD Wise woman of earth, I bring my question. Ask. What is the secret name of God? Men say it is too sacred to be pronounced. In sorrow we perform our rituals of prayer, and He does not answer. He must be named. Long ago, when God walked on earth men hid his true name for safekeeping. So diligent they were, the sacred hiding place itself was lost the secret forgotten. I know you know it. Could the name be Love? My dear, have you forgotten that too? Love is the sacred name for Human, man and woman. Is it Radiance then? Light inseparable from Darkness? No. Radiance is the sacred name for Spirit which contains Light of Sun and infinite dark between the stars. Infinite! That surely is the secret name the unimaginable, the immense mystery! No. That is the sacred name for Within. 73 Is it Nothingness? It is not. That is the lie of Reality. Truth? Truth is what it says. Truth is the name for itself. God. The secret name. The sacred name. Is it That-Which-Can-Never-Be-Known? Dear one, that is the sacred name for Thou. Is it Life? Oh no. Life is the true name for Earth. Is it Death? The sacred name for Womb. Where shall I find it, the name for God, the true name? I must have it. If I could speak it I would have God at my grace as magicians do, knowing the names of rabbits and winds of great spirits and powers of dark can call them up and make them obey. If I could speak the sacred name of God He would be at my command and I would summon him to do my work. 74 God! God! Hush. No-one answers that call. You were born with the name on your lips. Listen. I'll give it to you again, lightly as the sound of an owl in the roar of loneliness and you'll know it as true as layers of pain flake off you like dead skin — (only those who die can know it a second time) and when you hear it, listen deep in your body. It is not for praising, not for worshipping not for celebrating in idols outside yourself or guarding as a secret. It is for speaking simply, clearly, with joy over and over, every day, every minute: I am, I am! The sacred name of God. 75 AT THE WINDOW In your neck the heart of a trapped bird fast and light. In your eyelids a shoal of tiny fish swept downriver as backwards swirling you swim to sleep. Each day a new game: you shake your head then I shake mine and we laugh. Sunlight fills your room. Knuckles and feet knees and elbows and hard skull all the bullying bones in you still soft and green lie sleeping, dreaming in a world before hurt. Your tongue and eyes and brain potential killers innocent still of their harm but your mouth that early learner has two bright teeth like needles. A fresh snow falls. A new year floats into our house. Already you can tear flesh. 76 John Pass / Two Poems DAY-CARE A density of affection when childless I never expected is atmosphere. Here we are at day-care and you must have your airplane your orange car. You take them along till I'm taken by them. The character of objects shifts in your proximity; trinkets incidental blips sing terse avowal of possession: need and care. Things everywhere aspire to be words of yours, loves of mine extravagant with transport, sky. At 4 P.M. I remind you (clutching a new water-colour heart set on the yellow tractor across the road) to pick them up and bring them home. 77 BABY SHOUTS DAO Dada at loose ends in the mansion of his anecdote can't hammer home from the piece-work room to room, scraps of flashing, the last closet, a good word for Mum's faraway look her salal pancakes. . . till baby shouts "dao!" palms and delivers the half-dead horsefly mouths the tiny shiny screw sits back the wrong way on his foot tucked under and hugs the phone. 78 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Machado de Assis (1839-1908) is best known for his two novels, Dom Casmurro (1899) and Esau and Jacob (1904). He is widely regarded as one of South America's great fiction writers. Louis Bourne lives in Madrid and has had two books of poetry published in Spanish. His translations include a selection of Vincente Aleixandre's poems and Justo Jorge Padron's Circles of Hell (Circulos del infierno). He is a frequent contributor to Prism. Jeni Couzyn's latest book of poetry is Life By Drowning (Anansi), a selection of work from four previous volumes, plus new poems. Widely published on both sides of the Atlantic, she currently resides in London, England. Dennis Egan is currently translating the whole of Gaston Miron's Courtepointes (1975) and has had his own work published in various European and North American journals. George Faludy lives in Toronto and is believed by many to be Hungary's foremost poet in exile. Two volumes of his poetry in English translation have been published by Hounslow Press: East and West and the recent Learn This Poem Of Mine By Heart. Wayne Holder currently lives in Mission, B.C. Very active in the Vancouver poetry scene, he has had poems and essays appear most recently in Event, West Coast Review, Vancouver Literary News, and Small Press Review. T. H. Ilves teaches Estonian literature and language at Simon Fraser University and is currently working on a novel tentatively entitled Fat. Mark Jarman was born in Edmonton and now lives in Seatde. Press Porcepic will publish a volume of his stories later this year. Roberto Juarroz, an Argentinean poet, has published seven collections of poetry to date. He was awarded the Grand Prize of the Argentine Poetry Foundation in 1977. Karen Kimball has degrees in Slavic Languages and Literature as well as French. She worked for The Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus and now lives in Kent, Ohio. Jiri Klobouk is a Czech emigre writer currently living in Ottawa. His story, "Russian Troika," recently appeared in Cross-Canada Writers' Quarterly. Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938) published two remarkable volumes, Stone (1913) and Tristia (1923) before finding himself stifled by the Stalin regime. He eventually died in a labour camp, but his reputation has grown steadily and he is now recognized as a major Russian poet. 79 Joe Martin is active in Vancouver theatre, writing and directing plays such as his own The Dealers of San Juan, which was produced by The New Play Centre. His travels in Mexico and South America recently inspired him to complete a chapbook of poems, Insomnia Suite. Gaston Miron is one of Quebec's most well-known and respected poets. A selection of his poems appeared recently in English translation under the title The Agonized Life (Torchy Wharf, 1980). Suniti Namjoshi teaches English literature at Scarborough College, University of Toronto. Her books include Feminist Fables and The Authentic Lie. From The Bedside Book Of Nightmares, the collection from which the poems here have been taken, is due from Fiddlehead in the spring of 1984. Colin Partridge, an Associate Professor at the University of Victoria, has recently published a study in comparative literature, The Making of New Cultures, and Thunderbird, a juvenile novel set in B.C. Presently he is doing a study of contemporary African novelists. John Pass's poems will appear in his new book, An Arbitrary Dictionary (Coach House, 1984). He lives with his family on the Sechelt Peninsula, where he and his wife, Theresa Kishkan, plan to launch High Ground Press and specialize in poetry broadsides. Robin Skelton was the editor of The Malahat Review from 1968 to 1983, as well as head of the Creative Writing Department at The University of Victoria for many years. He has a long-standing reputation in North American and European letters and has more than sixty books to his credit. Charles E. Townsend lives in Ottawa where he translates from Czech. Marie Under (1883-1980) is an Estonian poet whose ample genius spanned some six decades of publishing. She is gradually taking her rightful place among the great women of letters of this century as more of her work is translated. 8o IN THIS ISSUE Poems by: Suniti Namjoshi, Jem Couzyn, John Pass. . Fiction by: Mark Jarman, Jin Klobouk. . . In Translation: George Faludy, Roberto Juarroz. . . A Play for Masks by foe Martin IN OUR NEXT ISSUE A selection of contemporary West African writing. $3-25 ISSN OO32-879O
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