POEM FOR CANADIAN THANKSGIVING 2021
for Michael Kovrig
An
entirely unearned sense of unexpected ease
Comes
this Sunday, perhaps because of the earlier
Raucous
post-mask brunch at a table with seven others
Debating,
rowdily, the British empire, how one manager’s
Nursing
home saw fifteen deaths in two weeks last year.
Over
vegan crepes and flat whites, after exercising
In
the park, amid rain, then sun, as a London October, this
Occurs;
I am gently teased for publishing conservatives
But
can any book deserve a bonfire,
Even
as evil as M. K.? I try to justify the neutral stance
Assayed
by publishers wanting to take no sides,
Yet
it feels a poor excuse for indecision, I agree.
I
am thankful for much this year even apart from survival,
And
the lives of my loved ones who survived,
I
am one of the most fortunate of those not famous, not lean,
I
can give thanks also for the weather, and my God, who,
Whether
or not I believe in them, either remains
Or
was never present anyhow. And that’s the muddling
Position
in the road I am on; relatively powerless,
In
the grand game of policy and airlifts, but so much more
Powerful
than the wretched of the earth, the refugees
Who
never seem welcomed, whose bodies and minds
Are
unwanted, who do not represent good value,
Are
not start-up quality, who we do not invest in.
And
I am with sin and have the nightmares to wreck sleep,
But
I do not cross the deep to source a stable land.
And
yes, various worlds complain of imbalanced needs.
And
we have been unable yet to inculcate our creeds,
So
that they interleave our patterns of behaviour,
Because,
being humanised animals, we expertly misuse
Our
capacity to love, and to save each other, at sea.
And
Thanksgiving was, it may be, a foul instance
Of
settler hypocrisy, praising a benefactor for things
Taken
for granted, stolen from others’ soil; no
Burnt
wick without first enflamed oil; the devil
Is
in the forgetfulness before the industry and toil.
We
neglect the other as we neglect the souls
We
no longer seem to believe we have, we here
Being,
I fear, only the common sense I can glean from talk,
The
media, reading. And without a soul, without a respect
Of
all widespread, strife-facing, endangered communities,
We
must remain encamped, in ignoring forts, staving off
The
wilderness in us we exploit
To
be cold heartless conquerors,
That
gets projected, like a Mercator map, to misshape
What
the world out there is, or might be said to look like,
Which,
being contested daily, is hard to see, really,
Let
alone alter, let alone bear.
But
we do know our little forts
Are
partial, are enclosed, and do not share the bountiful
Bounty
of what is, in fact, spread out before us, to hand,
What
can be uplifted, uprooted,
Drilled
for, removed. The high natural we decline
To
adore, in our tech-researched quest for artifice,
For
what the next advance will be.
There
is something, small,
That
feels like presented, actual material –
A
channel-wet child, that we can hold, if not secure,
Whose
very encumbrance feels
About
the same as a bar of solid gold.
THANKSGIVING,
OCTOBER 2021
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