Four poems by Richard Sanger
High Park
(May 1999, for Amila)
I walk in the park with you,
It is spring, and our children run ahead
Down the paths that run through this park,
The park my grandmother used to walk in
As a girl ninety years ago,
With an Irish nanny, no doubt,
Pushing the pram containing Anthony,
The brother who would die in France,
My grandmother, gone too now, all lace and petticoats
But already dreaming of blood and honour and death
As she recites, from Aytoun's Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers,
Some gruesome battle of the Highland clans
--the one she later claimed we descended from--
And then returns home past Grenadier Pond
In time for tea and raspberry jam.
I walk with you in the park
In this part of Toronto, this leafy quarter
With large brick houses, thick as fortresses, and as dark,
The gardens and porches of the West End
The good families of the town once inhabited
And that East Europeans of all sorts (like you) have since made their home.
I walk with you and I don't know the things you do:
What whispered syllables we catch from passersby,
What lapel pins, what scarves mark who from who,
Or how this park, in which our children run ahead,
And this whole neighbourhood, with a high street
Called Roncesvalles running through it, its mansions and villas,
Its bars, its butchers, its orthodox churches,
How all this can fill with wilderness, hunger, history, killers.
I walk with you through the park,
We talk, I've been away, we're catching up,
Spring has come, high time, you say
There are crocuses, forsythia, dogs and strollers out,
The snow that fell this winter was unheard-of,
And falling on Belgrade, as we speak,
There are bombs, I remark, high time too, you say.
We walk, and I can't see what you do:
The crocus that rises like an explosion,
A home reduced to rubble, wood to scavenge, water,
The suspicious flowerbeds, so fertile
With their lumps and craters, the twist in nature
That's left your mother dying, your sister, your father dead.
Bombs fall.
We walk in the park, and our children run ahead.
Wish
Let the afternoon sink
slowly though, oh slowly, please,
like Venice in the mud.
I see my schoolboy knees
plunged in black rubber boots:
the columns, you would think--
no, let the columns sink
and the Empire's arches fall.
On an island of pines
and pink granite, just north
of Pointe-au-Baril
and south of Manitoulin,
on the back verandah
of an old log cabin,
facing west, over Lake Huron,
I want to lie on the mattress
I lie on, drink white wine,
and read, and be, Lord Byron;
to lie back and swat flies
as some pliant young thing
dances in with a tray,
olives, cheese, a letter
(the Countess sends her love)
and the hum in my ears
grows louder and louder:
Is it rush-hour Toronto,
the Turks storming Lepanto
or the winged god that stung
this ruddy swollen sky?
I slap my shoulder. Blood.
Now let the fever rise
as the sun sinks, let it
climb through the pink granite,
the pines, the violet sky.
Bring me a pen and paper.
Today I'm thirty-six.
Markham Street
Undo me, you asked, your back turned to me,
The clasp at the nape of your neck
A trick padlock to test my intrepid fingers,
The dress all prelude and the party we'd been to
That night on Markham Street
Still bubbling in our heads. It was fall,
The street piled with leaves we raced our bikes through,
Escaping, and the party went on, the leaves flew,
We laughed and didn't know what we'd do,
Riding home, you to me, I to you,
In all the years to come, all the places we'd make home
--this house now off Markham Street--
Then turn around, my love, and leave (Click),
The door open, the dress falling... Undo me. I did.
Nothing Going Like You Gone
Enough of the sunset, you said,
and say now, Antonia, your words
recurring as the night recurs,
you dying to let the sky go red,
to get out and join the tumult,
the excitement of the city
as night begins--or was it me
you wished to leave, me whom you would,
days later, leave? Enough, you say,
quick with answers, quick with laughter,
turning now your back and, faster,
your dress whirling, turning to--Stay,
I say, stay and look at the sky.
I want the night never to come,
the sky to turn orange, pink, plum,
the light to continue to die
on the streets of the Albaicin,
Callejon del Aire, del Agua,
on the fountains, on the Alhambra,
to dye the city we lived in
(which I would leave) now mauve, now red,
now violet, as on that balcony
we stood a moment, you behind me
ruffling your bag. Enough, you said.
Nothing goes from the world, from sight,
as quickly as colours: ink-blue,
black-blue. Nothing going like you,
nothing like you gone. Good night.
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