Tuesday, January 23, 2007
3:04 PM
goodbyes and other pound-ings
Last Sunday, the housemates decided to go up on the roof at midnight and eat the chocolate cake Nathalie had baked. It was Nathalie's second to the last night with us, and we wanted to do something special. We stepped out of the 3rd floor window, climbed the sloping part of the roof to the flat surface covered in ice and snow, and looked up at a clear sky and a great view of downtown Toronto (no pictures, as most of the cameras wouldn't work in -8 degrees Celsius weather). Nathalie said she didn't like saying goodbye, so I didn't, and just hugged her, and we danced a little on the roof. Later, while sipping hot tom yam goong and bandaging my right thumb (which I'd cut against the metal roof ledge while sliding down), I thought about how Nathalie came to live with us, and how temporary our living arrangements are...(Fresh from Paris, she had just started work at a coat store along Queen St., where Ben happened to be shopping. He struck up a conversation, found out she was looking for a place, he said we had an extra room in the house, and days later she moved in and had dinner with us.) It all seems so random and ephemeral and wonderful nevertheless, the friendships and connections I've made in this city...
* * *
I've been tackling Pound's Pisan Cantos (LXXIV - LXXXIV), and can't help but be informed by the context in which they were produced... Pound wrote them in 1945 during the 7 months he was detained in a disciplinary camp for military/war criminals near Pisa, Italy --- where, for the first 3 weeks he was kept isolated in an open-air, barbed wire cage, until he broke down physically and emotionally, and was transferred to the building, where he recuperated and wrote. What I find impressive is all the allusions he supplies from memory, aided by the 2 books he had with him: a volume of works by Confucius, and a Chinese dictionary. But what I LIKE is the quality of tenderness in these cantos, the snippets of dialogue and details from his life in the camp... There are definite chinks in his intellectual armor here, probably since he didn't know whether he'd be executed or not, whether he'd see his wife and mistress and daughter again. Though the verse is peppered with dry jibes such as: "the army vocabulary contains almost 48 words
one verb and participle one substantive
one adjective and one phrase sexless that is
used as a sort of pronoun
from a watchman's club to a vamp or fair lady"
there are also lyrical passages that show us a glimpse of his tender side, like when he says "beauty is difficult" and is
"measured by the to whom it happens
and to what, and if to a work of art
then to all who have seen and who will not" (LXXVI)
and when he says:
"your eyes are like tigers,
with no word written in them
You also have I carried to nowhere
to an ill house and there is
no end to the journey.
The chess board too lucid
the squares are too even...theatre of war...
"theatre" is good. There are those who did not want
it to come to an end" (LXXVIII)
and when he ends with:
"nothing matters but the quality
of the affection ---
in the end --- that has carved the trace in the mind" (LXXVI)
Labels: house, poetry
