5

These things – to describe – not to describe – are important. That’s what I think – I – some voice – not to describe – that I hear thinking – I overhear. I don’t mean to be obscure. The city weighs tens of thousands of tons – or more – wherever you look at it – from – motionless. (4th floor of Birch Bldg., Cap College campus.) Something in your near distance moves – a leaf – looking over the city then, a cloud – moves very slowly – there seems to be no weather, no movement of the clouds – yet ten minutes later it’s all changed, invisible winds are pulling these topographies of condensation out of, into, shapes, though they look still. But the city is still. It has this – a – not patient, not impatient – a dead stillness – motionless – nothing could move it except the earth – to avenge itself – not on people, but on the city itself – the mere fact of it – being – thousands of tons of steel & concrete. It’s just an image in the eye – it doesn’t exist –

(I’ve been in offices, in other cities, working, with paper & pencil & calculating machines, telephones, typewriters, filing cabinets - & worn the white shirt & thus been in the city & the city didn’t exist –

no, it’s this languour of age that makes it seem to exist – what’s important? Did I start by saying something was important – that these things that go without description are important. Description – riding by –

& so there’s a mind – I can’t say – & summer’s over, the whole latitude is moving. If it’s there as an image – if it’s there as inhabiting the poem – that’s important, because it’s so for some I, almost random, but menaced by something that won’t die – but that – is in itself – death –

*

The city – a block. A little steam rising from one of the flat-topped high buildings – monolith style – modern. But nothing else moving. There across the inlet. (I looked to see if the trees on this side were moving, to give a contrast.) I imagine winter – the city in the mind – the trees, the branches, waving, blowing all around, & the rain blowing, but the city still there, dark, in the mind. So non-existent, that way. There when you don’t see it, as you wake in it. In a bed, in a room, in the city. In one of these blocky structures projecting upwards – rectangle & triangle shapes, in rows, among the overshadowing trees, & in them everyone breathing – separately – ready for the day as separate beings – souls – in this structure – structure of structures – (with its specific history based on land economy transportation – sucking people in

In 1910
Vancouver then
will have 100,000 men –

& do I think of them as souls? Did I say souls?

building it,
ever more motionless.

*

Eaton’s “rescued” by Sears –
the elderly ladies
with coats & artificial flowers & “permanents” –
seated on the buses at right angles to the direction of travel –
grey heads, mostly in silence, facing across the aisle –
batting thoughts back –

unburdening minds to high windows – light of the sky –
in the Marine Room at (old) Eaton’s –
that gave on the law courts, the art gallery, the Hotel Vancouver,

(now CuiScene – a “bistro” – no windows –
no crackers with the soup – a 50¢ bun -

*

“Young, but not fresh,” as Levi-Strauss wrote of São Paulo.
“100” in concrete on the grass verge by the concrete viaduct
of the Granville Bridge – monument to youth - to familiarity.

*

So a mind passes through these scenes, acknowledging them,
as also its transitory term,

& knowing
all this is important – all
to the souls –
(indiscernible
to each one – they don’t know they’re here –
& they’re happy not knowing

on this bus, fortunate