China Blues Page 3

  lying on its side beside the wicker basket. They

  will never give in, and we will never give in. We

  are like the lake, flexible, because we are immovable.

  GELATI LIMONA

  The desire this morning, early, still lazy

  with coffee,

  a clear blue morning outside, almost Aegean,

  to write a poem about how hot it was

  a couple of days ago – the question mark of a favourite

  big shirt which has, yes, definitely developed a frayed

  collar, plus, would you believe this, a rip under one arm,

  but loose, comfortable,

  some 1989 copies of Esquire over by the door

  & some recent copies of Vanity Fair,

  I want to keep the article on Jean Stein partly because

  I find her father, Jules, the way those steel-rim glasses

  sit so aplomb on his composed face, relaxed tension,

  so interesting – yes, it was hot on Thursday, a clear

  gelati limona day seen through glass

  but

  a sizzling butter day outside. You could have taken

  a strip of bacon & laid it on the Queen Street sidewalk

  & it would have fried in about ½ an hour. Marcus & I

  go to play pool at The Squeeze Club, the balls roll

  slowly, the espresso makes us feel cooler; & then when

  we come outside the city is still clear & even paler blue

  but the temperature has dropped slowly to about 78

  with a cool breeze. High pressure ridges &

  low pressure troughs. Stuff we can’t do very much

  about.

  This little drop in the temperature

  is so pleasant, plus I won 3 games in a row & Marcus

  is fun to be with, that I begin to feel balmy,

  simultaneously light-headed & full of espresso. If

  that piece of cream&dullred bacon you put on the sidewalk

  down on Queen was up here on Dundas,

  cooked to a nice crisp red, I would just scoop it up

  with one easy arm as we walk along & eat it for a snack.

  Instead we walk up to Giancarlo on College Street. The red

  snapper with extra virgin is as good as it was

  when Andrew M used to cook here,

  but the veal chop isn’t as good, they don’t cut it

  properly, it makes a difference to the way it grills.

  You see what perfect weather & easy pleasure do –

  they make the whole body into a relaxed tuning fork

  for picking out accomplishments & imperfections;

  too much balmy heat & espresso makes me long

  for absolutes, Iraq will become a peaceful country,

  Ottawa will reform a number of laws,

  the missing children of Erie County will return,

  & we will all live forever & be happy with the world;

  if I eat ½ as much I will probably remain

  just a shade critical – of the meal, the dark blue

  awnings, yellow light; but I have soup, & I eat

  the whole fish c/w an order of fettucine & tomato sauce,

  when it passes into my system with all that lovely

  oil & basil, I fall in love with the night,

  the moon, although there is no moon,

  Marcus, although neither of us is gay,

  & all these figures passing along

  both sides of College Street in the dark,

  although if

  I were to pass them again in the morning

  while shopping, I probably wouldn’t recognize

  the thick-moustached Lebanese guy

  in the dark suit. Sure. Sure I would.

  THE AMAZINGLY CALM FACE OF THE YOUNG PALESTINIAN BOY

  I’m living downtown again, & making money,

  sharing for the moment with 3 other guys.

  I go to

  Kensington Market about once a week. One of the stores

  has free-range chicken. I don’t eat rabbit. But the fish

  is good, & I buy oranges & purple black plums

  & bright green avocado pears.

  I was very moved by those

  lines about the perfume maker you murdered. Poverty can be

  attractive. Presumably he was a fairly poor man,

  with a wife & 3 children perhaps.

  Also the lime seller

  out in the Jamaican market.

  Everything which is truly

  beautiful is to some degree exotic. Look

  there’s a kid

  on pink roller skates curly blond hair elephant earring

  & I’ll bet he doesn’t even know

  what the word exoticism means. Poverty can be attractive.

  Markham was boring.

  I’m living downtown again & making money.

  Sharing a house for the moment with 3 other guys.

  Likewise

  the Portuguese fish handler. I used to live around

  here several years ago. Or the young Palestinian boy

  selling brown paper bags

  of lentils & mung beans.

  I am vaguely interested

  in what will happen when the Portugese fish handler’s

  daughter

  begins reading Saturday Night

  or going to French films. Moon in the Gutter, for

  example. Or when the young Palestinian boy

  discovers me

  & thinks I’m exotic. I am, after all,

  don’t you think,

  a lot more than just a good mind

  & a couple of degrees from Queen’s?

  CITIES

  We have salami and Emmenthal sandwiches for supper

  fresh fruit

  mangoes and oranges;

  I change the sheets and read the first four chapters

  of Broca’s Brain while you take a bath;

  Broca was a man with a problem

  he was devoted;

  I look over at my typewriter and think about the essay

  that I want to write on the autonomy of information grids;

  mangoes are tropical

  mangoes are universal

  all mangoes are fundamentally alike;

  the front brain is at war with basic ideas

  but what happens when you can’t get back

  to the foundations?

  We make love in the soft blue glare

  of the television set

  between the night sky and the pale grey broadloom,

  I almost lose consciousness until all I can hear is

  your voice murmuring over a million small white stones;

  your nipples are rough dark strawberries in the profile

  of the empty apartment with its large windows facing east;

  the red oblong PARK PLAZA sign winks back black

  this stained mustard building floating on a current

  of earth – clear moon overhead young mother innocent

  moon. The smell of potato salad and musk mango and musk.

  Bruce Springsteen’s beautiful New Jersey voice

  singing the word streets over and over and over again.

  The south is a rotten peach

  these rooms in the night are cities also

  where we turn our backs on bedlam and bellevue

  and walk into America again – the rain on our faces

  soft and cool,

  patient, unflinching. It is, after all,

  the only home we have ever known.

  STAMPS

  Charlie Parker would make a good stamp,

  there should be a lot of votes for that,

  & Rosa Luxembourg,

  she’s popular in Toronto,

  & Orel Herscheiser.

  Frank Sinatra once sent Orel

  a publicity picture of himself & signed it – For Oral,

  like hygiene, or like Roberts.

  Herscheiser – wh
ile he’s still a hero,

  before he starts losing, before the fabulous golden arm

  develops some infinitesimal bone chip

  around the elbow, some surreal flaw to defeat.

  What’s

  the difference to us if the person on a stamp

  is occasionally Belgian,

  or the landmark might be Dutch, for that matter,

  as long as it’s significant. I would like to see Grand Canyon

  & Smashed Head Buffalo Jump on some of the 2¢ or 5¢ stamps,

  make them large, okay

  buddy, with good colours, bright dusty roses & hot yellows,

  they cost enough, go ahead. We need indigenous images also,

  so now, in 1992, this is a good time to put Tomson Highway

  on a stamp. Or it’s not too late for Pierre Trudeau

  on the 10¢ stamp in a black G-string trying to look sexy

  & articulate. Or how about a real honest-to-god working girl

  from Detroit, brown-skinned, short black skirt,

  no fist in the air, just staring right out at you.

  Those

  eyes. Level.

  If you’re going to put a stamp on an envelope –

  why not put something on it with guts?

  THE GREAT LIBERATION

  When you walk into The Liberty

  one of the waitresses gives you a big hug & finds you a table

  where you can sit & order the Cab Sauvignon

  which costs about 16 or 17 a bottle

  & you can relax

  with your elbows on the table & lower your head

  into a pool of interesting tidbits of gossip –

  a story about a new arts group, a juicy bit about a

  well-known columnist who has left for Mexico. And

  you can tell your stories – go ahead

  it’s all here like a chic Kingdom Hall. But

  I think I usually like the bar scene itself

  better than the specific stories.

  The clear dark

  light & the voices rising & falling & the smells

  of Japanese chicken & cinnamon & Thai noodles

  are pleasantly interrupted by a variety

  of interesting faces, a girl with wonderful breasts,

  a fey young kid he looks suburban apparently has

  something to do with money & he looks hot

  he keeps snapping his galluses wide yellow ones.

  Everyone has a different kind of sugar

  or coke. I don’t

  need anything more than this to get back up.

  ALLISTON

  The summer weather up here is terrific.

  There are green peas & snap beans to pick over at

  Panharget Farms sometimes in the afternoon,

  the students

  in my workshop group are really bright as clean shiny

  new nails,

  the after-supper summer light is lovely,

  but, I admit, there isn’t very much to do

  in the evenings.

  I was watching a PBS science program

  ½ an hour ago, but

  you know, I don’t really give a

  flying copulative verb about quasars. I think

  the meaning of meaning

  is what you have

  before you begin to think about – What It is.

  Pagliarullo

  hit a brilliant slow inside pitch for a quick single

  & this monzer the size of a tank came down the base

  line & gloved it just in time. Tough.

  But

  Pagliarullo hits some nice balls out of the park.

  I’m still hungry; it’s amazing how a dumb white male

  like myself with several published books

  & an exhaustive knowledge of contemporary history

  can make a sandwich in the dark without any problems.

  I think it’s something I inherit from one of my aunts.

  I buttered the whole wheat bread & put a little salt

  on the rare roast beef Lilly

  brought me from Schomberg.

  While I was making

  the sandwich I watched the darkness out

  in the backyard.

  There is something very comfortable

  about rural darkness at the end of a long day –

  up at 6 a.m., lots of bright sunshine, 78–82°,

  4 meetings with students, 2 new poems,

  lunch at the German Delicatessen

  across from the library. I think it’s

  the completeness; darkness in the city

  doesn’t have that completeness

  & of course it doesn’t have the late-night hawks

  & Toronto full moons don’t seem to be even

  ½ as large.

  So after the sandwich & a piece

  of homemade pie I picked up my jacket

  just in case it gets cool

  & went for a walk down the hill over the Boyne

  River bridge for a late-night drink at Oliver’s.

  And again it was this comfortable, like a favourite

  blanket from childhood my old buffalo robe perhaps,

  quality of the darkness – not disturbed or diluted

  with city sounds or traffic, & full of odd nudges

  from the past – walking over Trout Creek Bridge

  in St. Mary’s for after-supper ice cream with my parents,

  or that night in Galt when my crazy stepfather

  tried to jump off the Grand River Bridge

  at Victoria & Water Street.

  Peaceful,

  just the darkness, a few late-night hawks.

  2 or 3 passing cars, bridges as calm as sculpture,

  & the shimmer of dark wet rural grass.

  PHILADELPHIA

  for Jan Conn

  I have been thinking about Philadelphia

  all afternoon, about trains and newspapers,

  about gas stations,

  about a job I used to have in a mill on River Street.

  I sit around with my friends in the evening

  and we talk about the same things, literature, politics,

  sex, the Van Gogh exhibit at the AGO,

  but why is it

  that I am the only one who thinks there should be

  a train to Philadelphia every morning,

  O say,

  around 7:45 a.m. would be good?

  Or who misses

  the sense of Philadelphia in the autumn,

  and how it stands for something even in the middle

  of a cold dark January afternoon?

  This is unfair, especially when you

  consider that a year ago the central part of the city

  was a sea of flames.

  There is a myth that encloses

  all these things and I am susceptible to that myth. I

  phone Sam, and we go out for coffee & chocolate cake,

  and then we take a cab out to the Danforth,

  go to Esperides and have squid fried in a light batter

  and sweet roast lamb with large golden brown potatoes.

  The food is good

  and Esperides is a warm room. Even the darkness

  of the Danforth late at night

  by itself fulfills something deep and important in me.

  Still, even out on the warm dusky street,

  hanging loose after supper,

  our cheap dress shirts pulled loose out of our pants

  because of the heat,

  it is my perception

  that something is not quite right. Even the marvellous

  new Hydro building by Raymond Moriyama

  at University & College is not as appreciable

  – unless you put it into a frame:

  Sherbourne Street, for example, and Philadelphia,

  and that building we saw by Philip Johnson in Chicago.

  HEY, HEY, MITCH

  How will

  I des
cribe the darkness of Wrigley Field at night

  & how people turn to each other

  after a great hit & say, Did you see that?

  Or the popular song

  that keeps running through my head, “Your daddy’s rich

  & your momma is so good-looking.”

  The darkness

  is a soft ½darkness,

  The light falls on his blond moustache

  & makes his eyes bluer, midwestern, cornflower

  blue. He is with his wife

  & one child, a boy; his wife’s name is Serena,

  Lebanese descent, beautiful, the other child, 4,

  also a boy, is at home.

  I am

  by myself for a week; Mitch Williams –

  not the

  Bad Boy of postmodern baseball, I have seen him

  in bars once or twice, tall, slim, good-looking,

  laughing a lot; I would be more inclined

  to call him the Iconic Hot-dog, in the Barthian sense,

  of postmodern Chi City –

  is pitching, it’s the 8th

  & he’s holding a slender 3–2 lead & keeping them

  hitless & witless. I am never lonely

  when I meet people like this. His wife’s eyes

  & the quick way she has of laughing nervously

  but with pleasure at an unexpected play

  make our small pool of order a warm place

  & the beer tastes that much better. “Throw the

  fast ball throw the fast ball Mitch,”

  chants his 9-year-old son. I say, “He’s going

  to hit him with the sinker,”

  & he does, he throws

  the heavy ball with a lot of thumb behind it –

  drops it in under the amazed batter’s knees

  to get the last out;

  & he himself, always the clown,

  a tall slim good-looking guy who laughs a lot

  in the bars,

  is bent so far over after the pitch

  that he’s almost like a crab –

  legs stretched out

  glove in the air, right hand fingertips touching

  the dust in front of him, eyes locked

  at that exact point where he placed the ball. They

  are all on their feet yelling for him

  & I am glad. I like this field better in some

  ways than the huge cement skydome with its giant

  retractable clamshell helicopter-focused roof. But

  it is also those blue midwestern eyes

  that say, “Comeon, relax, forget it, you’re at home.”

  & Williams, of course, because he’s such a fabulary