I'm an old man now (A poem)

 A Poem

I’m an old man now.
The weight of my memories
bears down on my days.
The truck there carries freight,
I carry my thoughts.
They pool like a lake.
The wind fractures the past.

The news showed a broken building
sliding into the street like water.
Gravity pulls the water over the edge;
a missile nudged the wall into silence.

I don’t hear much these days, cunning devices
in my ears catch the sound as it passes,
add and subtract. The words gleam
like crystals. But it’s not the light
of insight that dazzles.
The years have carried me
past too much indifference.

I’m granted nonsense,
cool and joyful, foam on the lake,
nudged by the wind
towards the silent stony shore.

I hold the coffee cup
and gaze at the garden.
Daylilies gleam like words.
They will fade before nightfall.
They will not know the dark.

2023-06-23 & 08-04/2024-03-21

 © W. Kirchmeir

There's No History Here (poem)

There’s No History Here
Above Kama Bay

This country has no history,
they say.

Then what’s that breathing there?

There are no stories told
more than a generation old.

Musty papers in old libraries,
read by odd fellows
who believe they can rebuild the past.

Frail quilts stored on high dusty shelves,
brought out into bright air
and fingered by old women,
as they tell who pieced the patchwork,
who ran the needle through the batt,
made arcs and whorls that hold
the coverlet together.

These tales made up
of memories, misremembered
names and half-remembered facts –
they don’t make a history,
they say.

Nor do those fragments
of a myth the elders tell.

Oral history’s not history,
they say.

Each teller adds his notions
of what was truly done.
Each teller makes a tale
of what she knows must,
not might, have been.

And if these tales are true enough
(for truth in history’s a guess,
a fiction built on facts),
if then these tales are true,
as any history may be,
that doesn’t signify –
a generation or two back
is as far as memory
and memories of memories may reach.

The land seems empty,
the sound of the truck
working up the hill remote, muted
by the space enfolding it.

The ghosts of those who came before us
do not speak in the wind,
their language does not echo
in the water-filled canyons,
their songs have long since faded
into silent distances.

And yet
        and yet.

Something moves behind me,
touches my neck.
Something like a word,
half heard,
catches my ears.

The heat feels loud as a shout,
the pines’ sweetness hangs
in the sun-stilled air –

There is history here.

There was history here.

What’s left of it –
a few flakes struck from stone
the rusty stain of blood
bleached
by indifferent rain and sun.

©WEK:2005-2020

Imagine a Bird (poem)

I hope there's no paywall to prevent you reading this article in the New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/29/opinion/eliot-waste-land-poetry.html

My response to it is this poem, which I wrote in 2014. (Yes, the photo at the bottom is of a cardinal). 

 

Imagine a bird

The backyard, mud and snow, sad grey-green grass.
Imagine a bird impossibly red in this monochrome landscape.

I remember a woman in a red coat
surrounded by schoolboys in blue blazers.

Words spill from me,
cadence and echo carving time.

I want to paint an impossibly red robin
ablaze in the dimming light.

 (Copyright W Kirchmeir 2014) 

 

 

 

 

Three Haiku

1.
Frog in sunlit pond
Heron stalking with prim steps
Bubbles on water

2.
Planes glide through blue air
Silver fish in white water
Death waits for his time

3.
Tulips stand bravely
By dark cedar hedge, spilling
Colours like water

 2022.05.24

215 Graves

 

I wrote this a week ago, it's a little rough around the edges.

 215 Graves

215 Graves with no names
215 names lost forever
215 sparks of God's fire
drifting away on the river.

They were worlds of wonder loving God's bounty
Loving the earth and the sky and the river.
It carried them on, it swept them away,
Time’s cruel waters drowned love's fire.

215 Graves with no names...

Pride and power took them from family
Took them for shaping as if they were clay
But God's spark within them resisted the potter
Flamed bright and loving until they gave way.

215 Graves with no names...

Then they were buried, discarded, forgotten;
The warm earth received them and held them safe,
Safe from the beatings, the scoldings and pain,
Dreaming of fathers and mothers and home.

215 Graves with no names...

Now we have found them, now their bones cry to us,
Were you the ones who talked of Christ’s love?
Now we must reckon with guilt of our ancestors,
But power and pride live on in us.

215 graves with no names....

We’re all one family, children of Earth,
Earth-mother who offers us love of each other,
Love that can heal us, love that can lift us
Above pride and power, above guilt and fear.

215 graves with no names....

When we let go of the greed that defines us,
The greed that we think will free us from fear,
Then the bones of the children will rise up and embrace us
And love will reshape us into children of light.

215 graves with no names
215 names to recover
215 sparks of God’s fire
lighting the way to love.

 

© 2021 W. Kirchmeir

My Father Was a Soldier (A Song About War)

I wrote the chorus about two years ago, the rest of the song fell into place last summer.  It's based on an actual event: One of my students at U of Alberta (Edmonton) in 1965/66 came to say goodbye when he got his draft card. "Over there" is Vietnam. Lois Jones has set it to music, but I hadn't heard it as of this writing. [Copyright 2016 Wolf Kirchmeir]

My father was a soldier,

and my grandpa, too;

they went to war to save the world.

What good did that do? O my,

What good did that do?

There was a boy, he came up north,

to get away from war.

He got his card, and came to me,

“Sir, I have to go.”

“You can stay here and live in peace.”

“My brother’s over there,

I have to leave, I can’t stay here,

so it’s goodbye, Sir.”

My father was a soldier,

and my grandpa, too;

they went to war to save the world.

What good did that do? O my,

What good did that do?

Oh, look at me, the hero says,

I’ll fight to my last breath.

When bones bleach white in the noonday sun,

The one who wins is Death.

[instrumental bridge]

My father was a soldier,

and my grandpa, too;

they went to war to save the world.

What good did that do? O my,

What good did that do?

Homer knew that war is hell,

he told it like it was,

the spear that split the Trojan’s throat,

the blood that stained the dust.

But the tale he told was already old,

though each war makes it new.

We learn the story, sing the songs,

and don’t know what to do.

My father was a soldier,

and my grandpa, too;

they went to war to save the world.

What good did that do? O my,

What good did that do?

We learn the story, sing the songs,

and don’t know what to do.

Three verses

 Looked through a notebook, found these verses I composed last year

 ***
What can we say? When
we’ve used up all the words
we speak of honour and faith
and then we draw our swords.
2014/07/20

***
Young man, believe what you’ve been told,
it is not easy growing old.
But there’s one thing that keeps me young.
Yeah, it’s that old time rock’n’roll.
2014/08/02

***
We’re in the fall of our lives now.
Soon the winter snows will come.
I look into your eyes and know
the journey’s done & I’ve come home.
2014/10/21

St John's Night

   In Austria, a large fire was kindled on St John's Night. People ran and jumped through the flames. Some couples did so, too, I think it was supposed to confirm their union and make it last forever. Many years ago, I wrote a poem about it. I've posted it on the Stories page.

POEM IN A COLD WINTER

POEM IN A COLD WINTER

A bird's song choked in my throat, I said.
And I saw a tin-whistling billy-goat
when the moon bloomed red as a rose.
And a grey church
with graves and black yews around
that's dead still, except for the sound
of the billy-goat's tune
dancing like laughter in empty rooms.
There was a blue sky, with chanting white clouds,
and a bottomless, sun-high sky that sowed shrouds
on a dead-still earth.
And the whistling shriek from the north-wind's throat
was the cornflower laugh of the billy-goat
dancing in the molten-gold pools of the ancient years
when the moon bloomed red as a rose.

[©1962; publ. in March 62, University of Alberta]

LARCHWOOD (POEM)

LARCHWOOD

I remember the nets of my childhood
heaving in the fluid air
they were mere play of light and shade
and did not seem strong enough to catch a fish.
They were hung on wooden racks to dry
those nets made white by water and the sun
by men that looked as delicate and tough
as the figures they carved in fragrant larchwood
that had a sheen in the winter lamplight
like shining nets that dried on larchwood sticks.
Marys they carved and Josephs
with robes that moved in the uncertain flame
and flowed like the nets.
And the Christchild was round with an old man's face
on a heaping crib
and the sheep wore woolly webs
from which wise faces peered.
Balthazar's crown was gold net on a braid
the box of myrrh had weaving incised lines.
And the gold coins jingled in a knotted bag.

But I did not see that, then, I saw
only the bright reds and blues, and the golden
halo on the Child, and the innocent white sheep,
and the green shutters on the windows.

My father still carves figures of larchwood,
but he does not paint them
and they have a sheen like white nets drying in the sun.

[copyright 1963; publ. in March 63, University of Alberta]

Love sonnet

Love sonnet

You can’t write a love sonnet these days.
Regular rhythm & rhyme are out of fashion.
Let line and subject wander any way
they want.  You can’t limit passion
to fourteen lines.  So they say.
Now memories of your skin and hair distract
me. Your eyes, blue and grey, recall skies of fall weather,
bounded by winter’s cool and distant pact
that defines our endings. We don’t know whether
in our encounters we should yield or act.
But either way, we know we’ll be undone
by love’s illusion that we will still be one.

(2006 & 2013)

There's No History Here (Poem)

There’s No History Here

This country has no history,
they say.

Then what’s that breathing there?

There are no stories told
more than a generation old.

Musty papers in old libraries,
read by odd fellows who believe they can rebuild the past.
Frail quilts stored on high dusty shelves,
brought out into bright air
and fingered by old women,
as they tell who pieced the patchwork,
ran the needle through the batt,
made arcs and whorls that held
the coverlet together; these tales made up
of memories, misremembered names
and half remembered facts
don’t make a history.

Nor do those fragments
of a myth the elders tell.

Oral history’s not history,
they say.
Each teller adds his notions
of what was truly done.
Each teller makes a tale
of what she knows must,
not might, have been.

And if these tales are true enough
(for truth in history’s a guess,
a fiction built on facts),
if then these tales are true as any history may be,
that doesn’t signify –
a generation or two back’s as far as memory
and memory of memories reach.

The land seems empty,
the sound of the truck
working up the hill remote and muted
by the space enfolding it.
The ghosts of those who came before us
don’t speak in the wind,
their language doesn’t
echo in the water filled canyons,
their songs have long since faded
into silent distances.

And yet –
        and yet.

Something moves behind me,
touches my neck,
something like a word,
half heard,
catches my ears.

I stop and listen.

The heat seems loud as a shout,
the pines’ sweetness hangs
in the sun-stilled air –

There is history here.

There was history here.

What’s left of it –
a few flakes struck from stone
the rusty stain of blood
bleached
by indifferent rain and sun.

Copyright 2012 W Kirchmeir

Poem: Within the Heart of Each of Us

WITHIN THE HEART OF EACH OF US
THERE DWELLS A PRIVATE GRIEF

My father is a lonely man,
He has one good, bright eye,
A lame foot, a crooked hand,
And a heart twisted and wry.

He came from the east,
From the mountainous rim
Of this green valley, the last
He'll see before his eye dims.

He broke his oaken staff
On the back of a red-eyed wolf
That then lay stark and stiff.
His good, bright knife
He left in the heart
Of another beast's life.

His body broken and worn,
Of his weapons bereft,
My father waits for the lion
That will ransom his death.

[1978; publ. in Northern Ontario Anthology, Cobalt, Ontario]

Poem: The Sea Son's Eyes Are Blue and Green

THE SEA SON'S EYES ARE BLUE AND GREEN
GOLDEN FISHES SWIM THEREIN
A poem for many voices

stars shape faces in his head, burst
coalesce and grow like trees
an old man's face
looms in the branches
see, see his hair
entangled in the boughs
see, see his hair
entangled in the branches of anemones

stars burst on the rocking water

I am scattered over the water
my fragments are scattered over the water
my face is entangled in the pattern the waves make
I am reborn in every motion of the water

stars burst in the rocking water

he gathers them into his head
they glitter
in the darkness
they blaze like the sun
that shattered on the water and became stars
bursting in the sea son's head, in silence
that touched the inside of his face
and grew like a tree

In that other place where these things happened
I sat me down by the waters of language and wept,
For behold, I had no face, my name was taken from me
And given to the wind.

[1973; publ. in 39 Below, Edmonton]