Black Maps

Not the attendance of stones, 

nor the applauding wind, 

shall let you know 

you have arrived, 

not the sea that celebrates 

only departures, 

nor the mountains, 

nor the dying cities. 

Nothing will tell you 

where you are. 

Each moment is a place 

you’ve never been. 

You can walk believing 

you cast 

a light around you. 

But how will you know? 

The present is always dark.

Its maps are black, 

rising from nothing, 

describing, 

in their slow ascent 

into themselves, 

their own voyage, 

its emptiness, 

the bleak, 

temperate necessity of its completion. 

As they rise into being 

they are like breath. 

And if they are studied at all it is only to find, 

too late, 

what you thought were 

concerns of yours do not exist. 

Your house is not marked on any of them, 

nor are your friends, 

waiting for you to appear, 

nor are your enemies, listing your faults. 

Only you are there, 

saying hello to what you will be, 

and the black grass is holding 

up the black stars.

--- Mark Strand

Canadians

Here are
our signatures:
geese, fish, eskimo
faces, girl-guide
cookies, ink-drawings
tree-plantings, summer
storms and winter
emanations.

We look
like a geography but
just scratch us
and we bleed
history, are full
of modest misery
are sensitive
to double-talk double-take
(and double-cross)
in a country
too wide
to be single in.

Are we real or
did someone invent
us, was it Henry
Hudson Etienne Brûlé
or a carnival
of village girls?
Was it
a flock of nuns
a pity of indians
a gravyboat of
fur-traders, professional
explorers or those
amateurs map-makers
our Fathers
of Confederation?

Wherever you are
Charles Tupper Alexander
Galt D'arcy McGee George
Cartier Ambrose Shea
Henry Crout Father
Ragueneau Lork Selkirk
and John A: however
far into northness you have walked--
when we call you
turn around and
don't look so surprised.

--- Miriam Waddington, (Winnipeg, Canada)

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

---John McCrae

The Moment

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

Is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

~ Margaret Atwood