THE HERMITAGE AT LENINGRAD

Massive golden filigrees

                     of savage form

           where uncut emeralds vie for light

             with rubies, pearls and sapphires

As rows on rows of tapestries

amid the Flemish, French and Spanish masters

      Assail blank eyes of

                   shuffling peasants

Feb. 74
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THE C. P. R. TO WINNIPEG

Across the Northern Shield it races
Chasing telegraph wires;

Pounding through the snowy wooded silence
Past time deserted sheds and
into peeling wooden towns
To whistle up the waving native children
And leave them stunned in waving emptiness;

Cleaving dynamited rock spiked with
lonely tamaracks,

Skirting frozen lakes and flooded tree stumps,

Nosing through the bush
To break out onto brilliant Lake Superior
Where balding islands hunch above the open water;

Searching out deserted stations
Jack Fish, Cavers, Heron Bay;

Thundering into tunneled rock
Then bursting out the other side;

Passing ice cakes yellowing from a winter’s wear
That bank the black and rushing rivers;

Chasing shadow clouds of blue across the snow
While bleached and creosoted poles
Mark the endless miles

Mar. 74
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DESERTED STATION

They’ve closed the railway station down;

the train won’t stop again.

And so the tag ends hang

Withered and unraveling

Through years of bothered memories

When days of sadness

O’erwhelm with thoughts of might have been

Instead of what can be.

Sept. 74
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CITY NIGHT

Across the city
Sirens faintly cry
Fretting
At a restive sleep,
Wailing night thoughts
Of the dark
Between two troubled days.

Nov. 75
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WINDERMERE ENCOUNTER

At five o’clock

A squall blows into Windermere

Whipping leaves

Shifting rain around the lake.

A tourist coach

Descends upon the High Street

Spilling uneasiness

That crowds the shops with dampness,

Hone an edge to conversation in the pub

And turn the town to fretfulness.

Sept. 77
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Erect

Above the pubic mass

of city trees

The C. N. Tower thrusts

Its way to heaven

July 81
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Clouds of steaming pulp

smoke

Racing from the chimneys

spreading pall

Across the town of Windsor;

Sour-sweet sickness

Sucked

In cancerous lung filling slick.

Québécoises

Struggling home from shopping

Thankful

For their husbands' jobs.

Oct. 82
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