yours

silence of silence & depth of space –
what/why/where/soever you choose dearest
choose. elevate the choice-subjected pallor
of the place – out of space out of primeval ooze
into mind into mine into yours.

you can’t forever sit in a room
(that is a living grave) which isn’t yours
so choose a lie to chase outside at languid pace
chase breathless chase life out of that space
& make the depth the earth the sky your skin
your mind your mine yours.

Dubious Headlines: Bishop's The Mitre Promotional E-Mail

Sent to all student e-mails at Bishop's U:

Aboriginal novelist Thomas King once said that stories are all we are. If that’s so, then the new edition of The Mitre literary journal is the essence of the Eastern Townships and all those who live here.

The 2009 edition of this 116-year-old tradition is full of stories -- like poet Leela Holt’s “There Is a Hole in the Ceiling” and Etienne Domingue’s “Echoes. A Grey Room”.

Well-known Townships writer Michelle Barker presents “A Modern Day Fairy Tale”, and Marjorie Bruhmuller is “Having a Beer with Winter”, while Brenda Hartwell checks out “Prince Charming”. Photographer Chelsea Caillier presents the “Massawippi”, and Dimitri Vouliaris introduces “Cinderella at the Wedding”.

In fact, almost 40 artists have contributed to this newest reflection of the Townships through their stories, photographs, and art, both long-time residents and students who have temporarily made this area their home, seeing it with fresh eyes.

The Mitre is published by the Bishop’s University student government, as a joint campus and community-wide project. The editor of the 2008-09 edition is Ontario’s Olivia Anastasia Arnaud, who graduates this month with a BA in English and a minor in Psychology. She hopes to launch a professional career as a writer, capping off her time at BU with the publication of The Mitre.

“I’m thrilled with how the edition turned out,” Arnaud says. “There were some long hours, but the process of putting this journal together was wonderful; the variety of submissions I received were terrific. I hope the contributors are proud of what they’ve done.”

The journal can be purchased at English-language bookstores across the Townships, at a cost of $10.

Next year’s editor has already been chosen; she is Anabel Collin, a Business student who’s also completing a minor in Journalism/Creative Writing. Collin is a Montreal resident, active in the Bishop’s community and in the Townships through her involvement with the children’s mentoring program Big Buddies.

She will begin accepting submissions for the 2009-10 edition on September 15, so now’s the time to get writing, drawing, and taking photographs. More information to come in the fall!

Echoes. A Grey Room is a poem. Overtly, it is about a decaying, dilapidated grey room; covertly, it describes a social situation from which none of the parties benefit from the perspective of the author who is dying for it to end. It has no plot, nor any other kind of recognizable narrative structure, & therefore it is not a story.

Lest we forget the savagery of the gods

At Pentecost the Knights of Old would venture in great pomp from out their halls, & durst not return ere they met some adventure. I have never had need for such bravery; I, of course, am of Merlin’s line – a bastard like the bard – living by word & not by deed. Man’s two outcomes – “word” & “deed” – I would declare more alike than different, even as they are so often at odds with each other. “Word” & “deed” both are born of Thought, & so they have different forms but their substance is the same. Some deeds are mute & meaningless; words kill or create: Theos begat Logos & made Cosmos; Word & World.

(No, the old rhyme which begins with a garden full of weeds & ends with a penknife in the heart is not wrong, but the opposite of a great truth, as Niels Bohr aptly pointed out, is also true.)

& so instead of seeking adventure, adventure seeks me. I am in a mood, thinking savagely of the opposite of great truths on an asphyxiated brain. (I was fine this morning, relishing in the smell of hailstones on lilac, which is the closest conceivable thing to a full taste of green spring. It is like spring sherbet. I do not know what is wrong with me now.) I am tired so far beyond sleep that every blink is the splinter of a dream, the thorn of an idea caught onto my memory. I feel as though our age is catching up with me; we are billions of years old, brothers & sisters all, made of the same stuff as stars.

& so thinking, & writing without thinking of being read, I write on our demise. I have discovered that the tragedy of Pan’s death is not that the weathered deity withered & died but rather that Palodes would not cry for a lesser god. Not Palodes, not even our own countries, could ever mourn us as much. We have not made them so.

Our gods, it should be said, were never meek: the temples of yore were not like the sun-bleached ruins of today, luminous in their glorious decay. The ancient gods dwelled in grandiose crypts, lit by flame & not by sun, drunk on the smell of burning holocausts. Gods of blood – of earth’s rich blood of undiluted wine, of the still thicker blood of innumerable offerings. Savage, not meek, the first mothers & fathers of civilisation – for this is civilisation, besides & despite Reason which screams “MEANINGLESSNESS” now & again.

& all civilisation is a variation on that theme, escaping from one womb to ceremonially walk into another, & by so doing gain nothing except perhaps a false impression of respect. All of the old gods were chthonic, the vestal flames shining uterine hues on the gaudy frescos of which nothing now remains, the thick air an amniotic ether & the blood – ample supply of blood & gore.

Everything since then has been a pale approximation of the ancient standard, allowing for weaker lungs & flimsier consciences to survive long enough to breed. It was – it is – artifice, of course, & yet we need the gods as much as we need air. They are the almighty puppets who seem to liberate us from our strings: for when we are thwarted & incomprehensibly destroyed, we see ourselves in the gods’ beatific faces, & sleep the sleep of aeons, comfortable in that womb, content in having played a role.

This is humorous, in fact, & yet I feel a broken heart. G-D, of course, is an Other & I shall not speak of Him for fear of what I might say, but while we live we are only the truest, lesser gods.

Something Else Was Said

We were remiss in our duties –
that much is obvious –
when the night stayed long with us
as though life would wait.

One glance: the letters on the page
seem to flicker. Something
in the margin said no one would listen.
We did not heed Cassandra, no,
not the Sybil, nor St.John –
we crammed our here-&-now with answers
& shoved Being beyond.

We were remiss in our duties –
that much everyone can tell –
belatedly sounding the knell
of fellow sextons while they fell
from their spires into Hell

(Hell is the words: I hear them roar
see them wash up on the shore
beyond the page. Hell is again- &
neverwards, sad minutes stretched
into days).

La vesprée incroyable

Dimanche dans les brumes ; ce n’est plus moi que tu vois,
rien que le soleil pâle sur ma peau qui déjà
donne l’impression d’un rêve glauque et fade. Le matin
j’entends les vêpres ; chantant les vêpres j’entends les glas.
J’entends le son traitre de nos pas incertains
suivant le prêtre – ce n’est pas ici, c’est par là.

Quand est-ce qu’on sait qu’on commence, que commence
la démence ? Quand on se répète, qu’on pense
toucher l’Infini du doigt ? Je chante et
tu ne m’entends pas : je suis la vesprée
incroyable, celle qui au détour des fables
devient une aube impénétrable.
Je chante et tu ne m’entends pas.

(Sunday in the fog; it isn’t me you see,
only the sun pale on my skin which already
gives the impression of an eldritch, faded dream. The morning
I hear vespers; singing vespers I hearknells.
I hear the traitorous sound of our uncertain steps
following the priest – it’s not here, it’s there.

When do we begin, when does dementia
begin? When we repeat ourselves, while we think
we touch the Infinite? I sing and
you do not hear me; I am that incredible
dusk, which come ‘round the fables
turns into unfathomable dawn.
I sing and you do not hear me.)

Nameless

Instead of revenge, give me truth:
your truth with every thing besides
which gives your life colour, & sights
for sore eyes to regret. Forsooth,

I cannot break the pattern, see:
the words they come so easily.
One for sorrow & two for joy;
Three is too much – so is this boy.

Hence nameless still I tread the Earth,
I tread alone the weary Earth
& wait upon the moon to show
a different face that it might glow

a bit for me the less for you,
lest I go cold again & blue.
You trudge onward while far behind
I'm buying time, paying in kind.

Oh well...

Spring is too long when left to brood. I’ve wandered beyond “should” & “would”;
I’ve made it well into the “musts” – so many notebooks gathering dust.
It’s all octameters you see: it’s how I think when the fancy
takes me though I’ve nothing to tell – so I sit as dumb as a bell
desperate to be shaken, &, well ...

Spring is too long in getting old. I’m not getting younger, I guess,
I guess there is no time for jests if blind Fortune favours the bold.
I would She did not think so low of all of us who, just like snow
melt a little with every touch. I would not even ask so much
as to be broken in, &, well ...

It’s all that I can think of now. Truth is: I cannot think enough.
I dare not even try to bluff nor yet to feign interest somehow.
I write my verse & think “Oh well”; “oh well” is all I think about.
“Oh well” to life’s a silent shout while I feel the mind giving out
yet all I can say is “oh well.”

Fortunes III

From the eye of a storm & roots of mountains
she made a charm, a brooch to adorn her breast
&, walking alone in the morning unrest,
she pactised with devils & with Seraphim.

More than a woman – or Woman completely –
she resembles comets which wander sometimes,
plodding their own course through celestial climes,
her long, bright hair trailing gleefully behind.

Reign, reign over us with your brow full of stars,
Oh Woman of Art!