Poem by Bert Almon

Eyewear is very glad to welcome Bert Almon (pictured) this Friday. Almon, a Canadian poet, has published nine collections. His latest book, A Ghost in Waterloo Station (Brindle and Glass, 2007), won the City of Edmonton Book Prize. In 1995, he won the Writers' Guild of Alberta Poetry Award for Earth Prime (Brick Books).

Almon has been a Hawthornden Fellow and a major prize winner in competitions like the TLS / Blackwell's Poetry contest, and the Cardiff International Poetry Competition.

He has taught at the University of Alberta since 1968, and twenty-four of his poetry students had published at least sixty books.

Readers who wish to read witty, stylish, and intelligent verse, should seek out Almon's poems.

The Muse In The Surgical Theatre

My muse watches with the transplant team
as they wait for the exuberant moment
when the first golden drop of urine
forms at the end of the cut ureter
of the newly-grafted kidney

Then she smiles behind her mask
remembering the day that Pegasus
dug his moon-shaped hoof
into the slope of Mount Helicon
and the first drops of water
formed in the Hippocrene Spring

My muse doesn’t flinch or turn away
as she contemplates a drop of urine
so absolutely pure
that it falls without harm
into the body cavity of the patient
Now the surgeon can finish the work
that looked so much like violence

poem by Bert Almon

Comments

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