TRY A LITTLE HUMOUR I SAID TO MYSELF

TRY A LITTLE HUMOUR I SAID TO MYSELF

Try a little humour I said to myself

as I held a Baretta up to my temple

to blast my way like the C.P.R.

through a tunnel in a mountain

to the seaward side of Hell’s Gate.

I tried to keep it light as a can of American beer

but beer to a Canadian poet

goes a lot deeper than that.

It isn’t a career it’s fate

and there’s nothing you can do about it

except try to engineer your suicide

like the Little Train That Couldn’t

to make it look as if you were laying track line by line

across a waterbed of four thousand square miles of muskeg

when you fell through a crack in the social net

like a childhood event in the life of Icarus

that keeps you from getting up off the ground

even at twenty-five below in a snow bank

drunk out of your mind

like some Canuck Dionysiac

dumbed down by his revels

after the Eleusinian mysteries of the sacred bars close early.

Revelation arrives here

like the memory of the night before

to a hangover that just can’t believe it.

The prophets of delayed insight

like the lag time on a star

see things in black and white

and hide in the bellies of killer whales

dressed like logos

protesting through their blow holes

the desecration of the seal hunt

haemorrhaging like ice-floes

in the ruthless gloaming

of the land of the midnight sun.

Imagine living in a mindscape

where you can’t dig wells or graves

half the year round

because the ground is as hard as an Irish nun.

And who needs rockets to get to the moon

when we rise per ardua per astra

through bolts and bars to the stars?

We reach cruising altitude

through a long runway

of dams and canals and locks

that elevate us slowly

like salmon swimming up stream

against the flow of time

like mystic beaver waterclocks

to enlightened extremes of undisciplined bliss

just before we die.

Fanatics of fair-mindedness

that balance life with death

by giving each its turn

to put an end to the argument

by seconding the suicides

of the winners and losers

in Last Duel Park

to make it a fair fight.

I’ve lived sixty-three years here.

I was born here

in the salmon-fishing capital of the world.

Campbell River, British Columbia.

And I still feel

like a political exile

who’s just taken sanctuary

on the grounds of the Canadian embassy

somewhere in my home and native land.

Here in Perth, Ontario,

out in the sticks

you belong to an extended tribal family.

Closer to town,

a distinguished blood line

of imperial ancestors

rooted five generations back

overly posed in sepia-tinged daguerreotypes

that look like they were painted in nicotine stains

against a backdrop of white with liver spots

and placed in funereal frames

to form a long scornful gauntlet

of moral opprobrium

down the long echoing halls

of the municipal mausoleum

where I go to buy my garbage-tags.

And where are the women

who gave birth to these stalworthies

of pride and place and privilege

in an imported milieu of cultured hypocrisy?

Were none worthy

of staring back at me disapprovingly

or were their hearts so big and compassionate,

their wombs so generous,

the ones who didn’t expire like daylilies

had to go so native to survive

they weren’t worthy of mention.?

Anyway, point is.

On any average day in Canada

since I was born

in the pantry of the world

I’ve felt like an endless Thanksgiving

I spend with myself.

My hospitable passport

a welcome mat I can drop

in front of any threshold in the world,

a screening myth for what was done

to the natives around here.

Maybe that’s why I feel

more homeless at home

than I do on the road.

I’m not staying long enough

to push the host out of his own house.

Good spiritual manners

and I’m a mannerly Canadian

are as much about timing as content.

Space may define the body of my country,

but it’s soul is time

measured in mountains and glaciers

and vast seabeds of prehistoric oceans

in lakes big enough to be the vital organs

of an entire continent

and stars so ferociously bright

in the absolute night air of mid-winter

they’d burn holes in anybody’s flag

like cluster-bombs of white phosphorus

were someone to try and naturalize them.

When you’re living in a country this size

it’s inevitable that you’re going to feel

like a small person forced to do big things

just to survive.

PATRICK WHITE