Unspeakable. The word that fills up the
poem, that the head
tries to excise.
At 6 a.m., the wet lion. Its sewn plush face
...
Courageous lair "might prevail"
Waking up to her your "yellow coal"
Steals a its way
...
1. And if you were to leave me for my faults
2. I'd not defend my lameness, walking halt
3. and from my trust I would elide your
...
I have a little dog of water
It is just a little peg
my dog of water
...
SAUNA 89 (sweated by В. Шекспір)
1. And if you were to leave me for my faults
2. I'd not defend my lameness, walking halt
...
Dignified is a heartsong here
Harsh traverse of the unknown
"Better to go down dignified"
...
I ll never master the art of poetry. I
have these words: sadness and tears!
...
I can t sleep for grief.
I can t sleep for longing.
I can t sleep for wanting happiness!
Mother, how will I live.
...
It was at the fountain where I washed my curls,
Mother, and where I did loosen them
and me
oh lucent
...
I m not pleading any thread of love
until I see you.
I m not plaiting my hair above
until the sea brings you.
...
I m going to walk to the mountain. As if
we could meet there!
First I must dream the mountain
...
Is bad weather coming
how would we know
Is bad weather coming
call everyone
...
In one of its cornices are the two boots of a man
In one of the stone canzorros
If you listen you can hear him walk
...
On the hill there is no hay
but rain
no hay for a hayrick but
small rivulets singing the grass down
...
I am in the little field of my mother
Her field touches
oaks of the valley
and I touch the faces of my corn
...
At night in the valley of penedos erguidos
a glint of wolfram
the uncles' job at night
to touch the glint of wolfram
...
In a woman's arms lies a man
his skin is blue and his lips are blue
and his chest is a hayrick
flat with forks of blue
...
A little river and a big river
the story of the bronchials
Some of earth's heartbeat but not all
...
Nowhere yet has a footfall proven
adequate to its situation
Waiting for the boots to call out
from their stall by the door
...
Erin Mouré is a Canadian poet and translator of poetry from languages which include, French, Galician, Portuguese and Spanish to English. Biography Her mother Mary Irene was born 1924 in Galicia, Western Ukraine (then Poland) and emigrated to Canada in 1929.(ref) Erin’s father is William Moure born in Ottawa Canada in 1925. Erin is the oldest of 3, having two younger brothers, Ken and Bill. In 1975 Erin moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, where she took her second year classes at University of British Columbia in philosophy. After only taking one year of classes Erin left University of British Columbia and got a job at Via Rail Canada where she continued to write poetry and is where she learnt French, Erin still lives in Montreal Canada Writing and Style According to an interview conducted in the early 1990s, Erin has four major influences which led her to become a writer, other than the work of other writers or poets: “Landscape of cars, her mother going to work, her mother teaching her to read, and in a small way losing her sense of touch”[5] Of her more recent work, Melissa Jacques has written: "Erin Mouré's poetry is fragmented, meta-critical and explicitly deconstructive. Folding everyday events and ordinary people into complex and often irresolvable philosophical dilemmas, Mouré challenges the standards of accessibility and common sense. Not surprisingly, her work has met with a mixed response. Critics are often troubled by the difficult and therefore alienating nature of the writing; even amongst Mouré's advocates, the issues of accessibility and political efficacy are recurrent themes."(on Moure's EPC page, external link below). Erin has been nominated and won many writing awards for both her writing and her translation. Some of these awards are the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, Governor General's Award for poetry, A.M.Klein Prize for Poetry.)
A Real Motorcycle
Unspeakable. The word that fills up the
poem, that the head
tries to excise.
At 6 a.m., the wet lion. Its sewn plush face
on the porch rail in the rain.
Heavy rains later, & maybe a thunderstorm.
12 or 13 degrees.
Inside: an iris, candle, poster of the
many-breasted Artemis in a stone hat
from Anatolia
A little pedal steel guitar
A photograph of her at a table by the sea,
her shoulder blocked by the red geranium.
The sea tho invisible can be smelled by the casual watcher
Incredible salt air
in my throat when I see her.
'Suddenly you discover that you'll spend your entire life
in disorder; it's all that you have; you must learn to live
with it.'
2
Four tanks, & the human white-shirted body
stopped on June 5 in Place Tian an Men.
Or 'a red pullover K-Way.' There is not much time left
to say these things. The urgency of that,
desire that dogged the body all winter
& has scarcely left,
now awaits the lilacs, their small white bunches.
Gaily.
As if their posies will light up
the curious old intentional bruise.
Adjective, adjective, adjective, noun!
3
Or just, lilac moon.
What we must, & cannot, excise from the head.
Her hand holding, oh, The New Path to the Waterfall?
Or the time I walked in too quickly, looked up
at her shirtless, grinning.
Pulling her down into the front of me, silly!
Sitting down sudden to make a lap for her...
Kissing the back of her leg.
4
Actually the leg kiss was a dream, later enacted
we laughed at it,
why didn't you do it
she said
when you thought of it.
The excisable thought, later
desired or
necessary.
Or shuddered at, in memory.
Later, it is repeated for the cameras
with such unease.
& now, stuck in the head.
Like running the motorcycle full-tilt into the hay bales.
What is the motorcycle doing in the poem
A. said.
It's an image, E. said back.
It's a crash in the head, she said.
It's a real motorcycle.
Afterthought 1
0 excise this: her back turned,
she concentrates on something
in a kitchen sink,
& I sit behind her,
running my fingers on
the table edge.
0 excise this.
Afterthought 2
& after, excise, excise.
If the source of the pain could be located
using geological survey equipment.
Into the sedimentary layers, the slippage,
the surge of the igneous intrusion.
Or the flat bottom of the former sea
I grew up on,
Running the motorcycle into the round
bay bales.
Hay grass poking the skin.
The back wet.
Hey, I shouted,
Her back turned to me, its location
now visible only in the head.
When I can't stand it,
I invent anything, even memories.
She gets up, hair stuck with hay.
I invented this. Yeow.
Nice poem