Mumbling Jack

River and Sea, a Lament
after Lament by the Riverside by Du Fu, 712 – 770 CE


An old man looking inward tugs
at the hem of his keffiyeh,
the tears of many years pooled
behind the stones of his eyes
as he steps out carefully
to walk alone in the Spring
beside an unfamiliar current far
from his river, far from his sea.

Everything here is young and green,
all slender willows and slim reeds
but, broken and dusty along low
banks, what he sees is the old
stone of houses tumbling down
into ragged shell craters
behind all the green growing
here for no one he ever knew.

Once he knew cool courtyards
and walked among olive trees in
a wind scented with Faqqu’a irises.
He walked among smiling faces
in gardens where wedges of poppies
touched aisles of shade beside walls,
lines of white lilies standing tall,
and rows of green figs in the sun.

And he knew a woman there, her face
was the sun and moon of his life.
They walked together each day
in the gardens and the courtyards
examining threads of saffron,
sitting on benches by fountains whose
waters were perfumed with blossoms
of bergamot and the bitter orange.

They sat together by fountains
where the sound of falling water was
the murmur of laughter around them,
the laughter of happy people
in the evening; a sound built from
the scent of coffee and cardamom,
from pearls, coral, and lapis lazuli,
and the sheen of worked cedar.

He sees them look to the air
on that evening, as if to watch
an osprey’s gyre, or perhaps
a loom of starlings weave
tapestries across the sunset.
He sees them draw together
as their laughter fades under
the screaming, falling shells.

He knew a woman there who was
his only home. He knew a woman
whose eyes were bright in the night,
whose teeth shone with laughter.
Where is she now? Where are all
those who are murdered in genocides,
whose blood is baked into dust?
The dead have their homeless too.

The River Jordan still flows there
past craters and broken stones, past
the shattered foundations of schools
and hospitals, past graves of journalists
and women and children children children.
The waters of the Jordan still flow
all the way down into the Dead Sea,
but carry no word of the fallen.

The stones of his eyes have shifted
and he weeps openly as he walks
here alone in another country.
He weeps because in memory
everything remains. He weeps
because he walks by a strange river
where all that is young and green
burns on the banks of his memory.

It’s evening now and he knows
that brown uniforms and greed move
beside the dust-choked fountains,
that cruel laughter cuts the air.
He knows the bones of the dead crack
under the heels of murderers and thieves
whose voices echo in the night
beneath the broken roofs of home.

The Green Ocean Waters (More Georgetown Memories)
Transposed from part 2 of Li Bai’s Changgan Memories into
the voice of a 19th-century Prince Edward Island woman

I remember when I was a child
entering marriage how little
I knew of the world and its ways,
how little I knew at the time
I was wed to a Georgetown boy.
Now I stand on the sand here
at low tide knowing how salt
on the wind tastes of tears.

I stand here each June in
the fair winds from the South,
my stubborn heart lifting with
every sail on the horizon. But
it’s already September now,
the West winds are blowing and
I wish for a letter telling me
you left the Far East long ago.

It’s always the same whether
you’re coming or going — each touch
laden with the ballast of knowing
another tide will carry you away.
How many days are left now before
your ship ties up in Halifax?
I dreamt I was on my way to you,
crossing against the wind and waves

just last night while the first
hurricane of the season spun in
across the coast, scented with
the sap of poplars and pine; ripping
shingles from roofs, surging salt
water against sandstone foundations
(where, while all that wind whorled,
was my travelling, travelling man?);

dreamt we rode the dappled horses
we longed for as children, rode
east across a wooded island where
orchids were lanterns in the mist;
we were a duck and a drake swimming
in dark water among green reeds
just as those two mallards do
on the painted screen you brought me.

Pity me now, growing older alone —
I was fifteen a long time ago
with my skin always soft and pink
as the petals of peach blossoms.
Why did I marry a travelling man,
a man already wedded to a ship?
The green ocean waters are my grief,
my grief is the salt on the wind.

Snow at Night
After a poem by Po Chü-i –CE 772 – 846

“Oh!” you said, “the pillow’s cold,”
and licked the window’s hoarfrost.
Then, “Oh!” again. “Hear how twigs
snap under the late night snow?”

Old Tune for the Banjo
(After Chiang K’uei’s “An Ancient Air for the Lute,” 1202 C.E.)

Spring ends as the willows twist
in yellow strands that send you
with the evening crows
in pursuit of sunset’s gold.

Dreams follow you as words can’t —
you’ve left a sweetness in my heart
that can only be spoken
by the banjo’s bright strings.

Cartography in Naufrage

In the afternoon an eagle
turns on an offshore breeze
while the compass of her beak
scores line after line into
the fishing map constantly
reconfiguring in her head.

Upriver this morning, as
the early mist smoked off
cattails, she sketched stands
of spruce along the bank
and their limbs’ languorous
stretch down to dark water.

But now she’s looking towards
evening and tracing the river’s
warmth fading into the Gulf as
she circles above the blood scent
off the tuna boat working back
to harbour through the chop.

The Stir of Lupins

On the back roads in July
I can’t hear tractors anymore
over the hum of bees in the sun.

Days like this a breeze ambles
down the treeline, trails over
leaves of poplar and birch

and ripples its way all along
the low banks where pussy willows
lazed at the end of March.

It stirs these lupins lingering
in their purple haze through
the long afternoon, urges me

to get half-cut on their cider scent
and roll with them in the ditches.

Evening Lilac

It’s evening now. Outside my window
the breeze has begun to gather the perfume
of lilacs after their slow afternoon
in the sun, pushing air over the sill
to scent the cool shadows, draw me
from my bed to stand half-draped in
linen, trying to breathe it all in. I will

light a candle now, I think, and watch
the flame tremble as I do at the lilacs’ touch.
I wonder, if you were here would you see
what I would see if I turned now to
the mirror? How I am an evening lilac
moving with the summer breeze
quickening towards midnight.

Magnolias in the Rain

Here you are, still leafless
in early May, stretching your limbs
out in the rain and up towards
where the sun will be tomorrow,

but you’ve already made
flowers you hold above our heads,
yellow, white, and pink petals
surrounding pistils and stamen

leaking a faint odor of rum
into spring days lengthening with
longing. Tonight, let my dreams
bury me in your sweet scent.

A Movement in Her Throat

The harpist sat upon a bank
and braced her harp on stone.
She touched her fingers to the strings
one by one and each alone.

She began her music slowly
but with never a note in doubt.
It asked of those who heard it things
they’d never spoken about.

The evening air was cooling,
the sun sank behind her head.
The crows folded their wings in trees,
a stillness like the dead.

A movement in her throat became
a melody she’d found among
the crowded graveyards of the earth,
and the first she’d ever sung.

Her voice swelled, a rising moon
that arced up out of the past
and scattered all its silver light
as dew upon the grass.

With each verse her quickened fingers
strewed stars across the open sky
until it was a dust of galaxies
and a smoke of nebulae.

The harpist sat upon a bank
and braced her harp on stone.
And when her fingers plucked the strings
she made the world her own.

Bobcat, Fredericton

Only you and the moon saw me
on the prowl in the March night.
I came out of the woods while
the city slept around furnaces.

I wore the old skin, ears notched
by skirmishes under other moons,
claws curved in their sheaths,
a hunger in me beyond voles.

I saw you in your window, awake
before the dawn. Did the moon,
pulling at fraying strings, draw you
restless from old comforters?

I was gone before the small cloud
of my breath dispersed among
the alders, into the ravine where
faint hammers of blood thudded

in thickets, among roots. I savoured
the steam of round, yellow fewmets,
their scent telling me of everything
seasoning warm, waiting flesh.

La luna roja

A veces le dolían las manos y las piernas.
No solo en el invierno, sino también a menudo
en lo más profundo de sus sueños de verano.
Como aquellas noches en las que volvía a casa
después de nadar con sus amigas
en las cálidas y saladas aguas
bajo la luna de ojos abiertos.

Siempre se despertaba en la humedad
de finales de julio, segura de que
recordaba los colmillos y el piel de los mamuts,
la nieve en aire, el hielo en los bordes de los ríos,
y sus huesos enfriándose cada día más.

Pero es febrero, así que, por supuesto
sueña con glaciares y con el duro trabajo
que los interminables inviernos siempre han exigido.
Y ahora, por las noches, se queda
mirando al cielo durante horas,
con la esperanza de que esta luna roja
esté en llamas
y que sus llamas vuelvan a calentar el mar.

Red Moon

Sometimes her hands and feet hurt.
Not only in the winter, but often
deep in her summer dreams too.
Like those nights she came home
after swimming with her friends
in the warm, salty water
under the wide-eyed moon.

She always woke up in the humidity
of late July, sure that she remembered
the tusks and skins of mammoths,
snow in the air, ice at the edges of rivers,
and her bones growing colder every day.

But it’s February, so, of course
she dreams of glaciers and the hard work
that endless winters have always demanded.
And now, in the night, she stares
up at the sky for hours, hoping
that this red moon is on fire
and its flames will warm the sea again.

February Morning

On my way home last night
I said goodnight to the moon.
But she seemed distant,
Perhaps didn’t hear me.
Just carried on, staring down.
I wondered briefly what
Might be on her mind, sinking
Her so deep into her fog.

This morning I stepped out
And saw what she’d been at,
How she’d feathered everything
With hoarfrost—all that plumage
Quivered and the world became
A great white bird in flight.

See You Where the Orchids Bloom

I tell myself now that you’re gone
and I didn’t see you at the end
that you never were one for goodbyes
anyways, all the lingering and long sighs
were like to put you round the bend.

Not that you minded going round the bend,
you were always apt to follow how
the path wound through the woods among
tree roots to where moss overhung
a stream. That’s where I’ll see you now.

I’ll see you in the green of May now,
in the still, damp woods beyond the yard,
pausing to cipher from how the juncos flew
where the lady’s slipper blooms for you.

in memory of Christine Gates

January Moon

January’s dark
but, through the evening ice fog,
in the eastern sky,
see? Lorca has kindly hung
his wax lemon moon for us

Midwinter

January soon.
An orange flame of larches
burns on the treeline
while the charcoal wings of crows
smudge the evening sky.

His Lowered Head

What do I remember of spring
besides the roar of the red Massey
sowing barley beyond the fence
and milk tasting slightly grassy
with the Holsteins back at pasture
after another winter of musty
hay for their cud, with scarce grain scooped
into the troughs from the dusty
grinding shed in the barnyard?
I remember the bull out in his pen
dipping his heavy head with its scarred
ridges left by the cauterizing iron
when he was a calf. And I can see
his lowered head remembering me.

Long Silences

When I die, I will not be
buried beside you
but we’ll whisper
to each other.

I’ll listen for your curious mind
in the restless movement
of frost and stones
under the winter ground,

the way you used to tap
your nails slowly
against your teeth
while you thought.

I’ll hear your dry, happy laugh
in the cold branches
of the cottonwoods
along the frozen creeks.

There will be mild nights
in summer too, when
the worms carry
our kisses under the rain.

And there’ll be long silences
at dawn, while we listen
to the beak of a blue heron
tearing the mist into ribbons.

Luna de noviembre

Una vez pensé
que no había ningún lugar
donde la luz de la luna
no pudiera alcanzarme.

Pensaba que ninguna sombra
ni nube, ninguna oscuridad
podría oponerse a la luz
y ocultarte por completo.

Pero ahora sé
que estaba equivocado
porque te has ido y solo
recuerdo que me tocaste.

A menos que esta lluvia
que noviembre lleva en los bolsillos
como monedas sueltas
para echarnos en la cara
esté hecha de tus últimos destellos.

November Moon

I used to think
there was nowhere
the November moon
couldn’t reach me.

I thought no shadow
or cloud, no darkness,
could stand against your light
and hide you completely.

But now I know I was wrong
because you are gone
and I only remember
you touched me.

Unless this rain
November carries in its pockets
like loose change
to throw in our faces
is made from your last few gleams.

Late October now.
Trees burn all over the earth.
Above tent cities
Humanity’s ashes drift,
A haze of grief and hunger.

Somewhere

Somewhere, I suppose,
there are olive trees unburned
and dust unmixed with blood
on the wind. Somewhere

children’s voices echo
from high, unbroken walls,
their joy softened by
the warm, green leaves of trees.

Somewhere there are no
rockets, gunshots, or hunger,
no screams and groans
and memories in rubble.

Somewhere there must be
humanity, unbandaged bodies
moving fearlessly to music,
love that doesn’t know death daily.