7

One among the old people
in the cafeteria on the 6th floor
of the Bay – Seymour Room

Necropolis –

a coffee & danish
not thinking of anything
but the raisins

Sears will manage Eaton’s as a traditional department store, not high fashion,
but will keep the Eaton’s name because people who shop downtown aren’t interested in garage door openers.

An apartment house in the West End changes hands – 50% increase in rents – “All of us could have had strokes.” Not sure if she read that in The Province or heard it on News 1130.

Skytrain to Waterfront – faces reflected impassive as in an old T. S. Eliot poem – as if the set of the face belied the interior mind – and it does – try it – I could teach this to the young.

Wait for something to happen – want nothing to happen. Homeostasis. Sun flashes past the pillars. Terminus station: “Will all passengers please leave the train.”

winter comes on in the mind
even before October’s half over –
the broom sweeping leaves

In Gastown, the concentric brick circles & low ornamental posts with chains – what is this all about? Something else than is given in perception, so shut your eyes. Shut the mind’s eyes. Fiercely.

No smoking, tourists. Go outside,
he says. Who? Oh, I forget, I’m dead,
I can’t smoke. Which are tourists
& which are ghosts.

Look at the old warehouses, concentric circle brick arches over the windows, pediments with an inset brick pattern & think

why are there so few
here
(compared to, say, St. Louis)

did they (we) have just-in-time delivery
from the trains to the steamships,
the steamships to the trains?

a single ape

in complex light

city of death, city of friends

10 again. Dark, seamed faces,
old clothes. (Some missing word)
as Swedes. This is prosperity.

Washrooms on the 9th floor
Elevator door mirrored
on the inside. Security man:
2nd door to your left.
Mirrors, red & gray tile.
Inside the Hong Kong bank.
It’s cool in here, & it’s night, & it’s not sad.
In the men’s room of the Hong Kong bank
(she uses the men’s room).

When Debra McPherson pointed over the heads of the crowd at the anti-TransLink rally & said, “I’ve always liked looking at her. I remember the original,” nobody knew what she was talking about. I knew. She remembered the stone figure of a nurse executed in high relief that had adorned the façade at the southeast corner of the old Georgia Medical-Dental building (blown up) & that had been replicated at about the same height on the new Cathedral Place building that had taken its place.

I saw it on TV. And two days later I read it in the Sun. The triptych of the explosion. A time-sequence. The dustcloud rising to reclaim the irresolute verticals. I wondered what happened to the steel frame. Oh, I know now.

The newspaper is held up at a distance, depending on her eyesight, between the reader and the city or flat on the breakfast table next to the coffee cup. When the newspaper is lowered, the city rises again & she forgets that it has changed.

The Devonshire Hotel. I remember when I first came to Vancouver I used to go to the Dev. They served a great corned-beef sandwich with hot mustard. I thought, “This is England!” Blown up – replaced by – the Hong Kong bank!

Now back downstairs in the (atrium?) she rejoins the crowd dressy at the opening of a display of photographs of writers. She sees her own photograph with a poem. It reminds her of Iris Murdoch’s wry inquiring smile before her forgetting.

These formalities, of people
kissing, exchanging
compliments, & lightly patting
the other’s hand, at the same time as
“No, thank you.”

*

At Darby’s drinking whiskey (that catches the tone of it, no crap about brands or labels – nationalities). Watching the Redskins & Cardinals, from Phoenix, out one eye (the left), & the other, the Mets & Atlanta tied 1-1 in the 14th, in a rainstorm. The electronic scoreboard says “14th inning stretch.” And I keep looking out the window onto Macdonald, the October dusk, now night, & thinking it’s raining here. No, it’s raining in New York, my mind snaps back at my brain. And now from up the bar voices of three middle-aged lads arguing on two drinks about Canada & the States. The youngest, biggest, richest-looking one says, “There’s no sense of urgency here.”

I laugh, soundlessly, smilelessly. No, there’s no sense of urgency here, either.

I’m glad the NDP screwed up the convention centre deal. It means I won’t have to walk another 200 m to the SeaBus.

It’s not true the snow makes the flanks of the Lions more lion-like; here it is October & the rock is bare; they’re like lions sculpted by some Assyrian or Henry Moore. If anything, the snow would obscure these lines.

City of death, city of friends.