“Subscribe to the first step taken/from a justified line into the margin”—Seamus Heaney
______
Diana’s book, Learning Russian,
72 pp $CAD 12.95
ISBN 1-894469-00-3
is available from the Publisher:
Denis De Klerck
The Mansfield Press
25 Mansfield Avenue
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M6J 2A9
Phone: 416-532-2086
e-mail: [email protected]
or through the distributor
Marginal Distribution
www.marginalbook.com
[email protected]
277 George Street North
Unit 102
Peterborough, ON Canada
K9J 3G9
705-745-2326 (Look up under Mansfield Press)
Also available at www.chapters.ca
Learning Russian
Other work by Diana Fitzgerald Bryden at Insomniac Press: www.insomniacpress.com
For more Poets
Islands
After hours, he steps into foliated dusk.
Breathes in the murmur of his neighbours’
evening talk. They fret over shrinking ice,
islands melting in their drinks. Half-expecting
terrorists to vault their walls and land
with expert softness in their gardens.
Veiled from himself in the chalky air
Hassan moves gently under
borrowed trees. In another time-zone
his garden waits: lovely, ordinary green.
Wires make no sound
A letter from the Secretary to her sister-in-law
Wires make no sound.
These letters fly
faster than the plane
that carries you
as letters fly
in cargo bays below the plane
that carries you
above, the mail below.
In cargo bays below the plane
stiff grains of ice are blown
above the mail. Below
the desert’s swallowed.
Stiff grains of ice are blown
and blue the air.
The desert’s swallowed
by soft mist.
And blue the air!
A glassy cup
by soft mist
is filled. Sweet air.
A glassy cup
by humming instruments
is filled. Sweet air
will clear the baby’s lungs.
By humming instruments
he’s fed. His bronchial tubes
will clear. The baby’s lungs
are spared. His life. Your heart.
He’s fed. His bronchial tubes,
you write, are healed.
Are spared. His life. Your heart,
and so my heart.
You write. Are healed.
Wires make no sound,
and so my heart
(faster than the plane)
will carry this to you.
The hospital’s body
Sometimes she thinks of what
the building hears and sees.
The night-time labours in its inner rooms.
The shadow of Blake’s passing,
late at night. The weekend laxness
as the walls regenerate, release
their sighs, unpeople and recline
like businessmen with loosened ties
and open collars, sipping wine.
In half-lit rooms computers glow:
paintings in a gallery.
The trees outside stand still or sway.
The ivy flickers up the wall,
and sleepers shroud themselves, crouch small
for shelter under monuments
and recessed doorways, under benches
on the median. Pray that forecast rain
will be suspended
