Al Purdy: The Dead Poet

THE DEAD POET

I was altered in the placenta

by the dead brother before me

who built a place in the womb

knowing I was coming:

he wrote words on the walls of flesh

painting a woman inside a woman

whispering a faint lullaby

that sings in my blind heart still

The others were lumberjacks

backwoods wrestlers and farmers

their women were meek and mild

nothing of them survives

but an image inside an image

of a cookstove and the kettle boiling

— how else explain myself to myself

where does the song come from?

Now on my wanderings:

at the Alhambra's lyric dazzle

where the Moors built stone poems

a wan white face peering out

— and the shadow in Plato's cave

remembers the small dead one

— at Samarkand in pale blue light

the words came slowly from him

— I recall the music of blood

on the Street of the Silversmiths

Sleep softly spirit of earth

as the days and nights join hands

when everything becomes one thing

wait softly brother

but do not expect it to happen

that great whoop announcing resurrection

expect only a small whisper

of birds nesting and green things growing

and a brief saying of them

and know where the words came from

                                             

                                    -Al Purdy  (1918-2000)

                                     From:   Beyond Remembering - The collected poems of Al Purdy. 2000.

 And here's Margarat Atwood, reading Purdy's Wilderness Gothic.