Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Lyrical Unification in Gambier

by
December 2001–January 2002, no. 237

Lyrical Unification in Gambier

by
December 2001–January 2002, no. 237

(i)

What remains barely the weather report: sentencing labours of history

against all beginnings, the maples

leafless, the houses barely porous.

 

(ii)

I ride roads I am not familiar with,

a figure of speech, chrome strips

between windows. To the south,

burial mounds. Resolution

deep and simpatico. Northwards:

 the lake effect, the snow plough.

 

(iii)

Deer go down to bow and gun,

roadkill is a ‘cull’: beauty

in the eye of rhetoric

keeps the engine

ticking over.

 

(iv)

Cornstalks like rotted Ceres’

thin black teeth. To end with this.

A season of political arrangements,

remnant snow quarried

like that pitiless ocean.

 

(v)

The driver must resist

all beauty, the smell

of an unfamiliar passenger.

A door rattles, the car

is almost new.

It is shut properly. Speed limit.

Farm machinery. A (solitary)

white field enclosed

by thawed pages.

 

(vi)

Maples, oak ... all kinds.

A tornado ripped through here

 three months ago and didn’t

touch the houses either side.

Birds warble in the engine

cavity. A cord of wood

stretches out below

the kitchen window.

He says we listen

differently.

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.