"...cloudless
sky / unending slow / invisible sifting / white on white / horizon to horizon..."
Many of John Unrau's lyrics evoke fleeting moments of joy and
grief in a harsh and barren landscape. Empathy with the lives of refugee
ancestors on the Canadian prairies inspires many of these poems. Others
dealing with historical figures and various contemporary annoyances are
enlivened by a quirky offbeat sense of humour. Wordsworth is confronted
by the cellphone; a television newsreader emerges as the priestess of an
ancient Greek oracle; Andy Warhol's soupcan becomes an object of lust;
a murderous fish converts to New-Age spirituality. This first collection
contains poems based on a wide variety of subjects, expressed in many tones
and styles.
About the Author
John Unrau
was born in 1941 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in a Mennonite family. He was
a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford in 1962 and received his MA and D.Phil from
Oxford in 1969 with a thesis on John Ruskin's architectural writings and
drawings. He has published two books on Ruskin, 'Looking at Architecture
with Ruskin' (1978) and 'Ruskin and St. Mark's' (1984), both
with Thames & Hudson, London. 'The Balancings of the Clouds: Paintings
of Mary Klassen', was published by Windflower Publications, Winnipeg,
in 1991. He is a Professor at Atkinson College, York University, Toronto,
Ontario. This is his first poetry collection.
Some
Poems from Iced
Water
Father
on
the road to Frankfurt
July of fifty eight
rounding a bend toward
a red-bricked German town
you suddenly stopped the car
ignoring mother's protests
and as the five of us watched in amazement
climbed in your immaculate black suit
through a barbed-wire fence
and jogged through swath and stubble
toward three people working in a field
my
window was rolled down
and from a hundred yards
I watched negotiations;
heard high-pitched protests,
laughter, then saw you
strip off jacket, tie,
hand them to an old blue-kerchiefed woman
and taking her triple-tined pitchfork
join the other two at work
for
half an hour on the road to Frankfurt
we sat and watched you stooking grain
in perfect harmony with your co-workers,
the only incongruities
your shirt of gleaming white,
the woman standing motionless like Jeeves,
your jacket folded neatly on her arm
you
were on your way to give a paper
at the Max Planck Institute
on monosomic chromosomal substitution:
a scientist merely
but
when you strode back to the car
brushing chaff and sunlight from your hair
you were to me at pimply seventeen
Odysseus come to claim his kingdom back
"Just
the way we did it
at Charlie Comerford's in the thirties"
was all you said:
I think that was
the clearest sight I ever got of you.
On
Lake Agnes Trail
for Linda
we
didn't walk here together
but coming down alone today
loudly crunching the snow
I am halted in mid-stride
a
low soughing pulse
insistent, precise
stills my breath
high
above snow-burdened firs,
stroking crisply
through incandescent blue,
raven ascending the mountain
etches her dark wake on my mind
Poem
In Late Autumn
"The great wings sighing with a nameless hunger"
Derek Mahon, Canadian Pacific
Here
they come again
our resident Canada Geese
circling in ragged patterns
over rooftops and parking lots
bellies aglow
in low morning sun
it's
late October and the urge
to travel somewhere
has them up and gabbling
in tight return trips
to the cornfields at the edge of town
their
stupid clamour
sends me out walking
nettled by thoughts
of my own long-distance dreams
shrunk to a routine circling
near the limits of the manageable
at
the new subdivision
I find them settled
on and around its landscaped
all-weather pond:
neat dowels of green
gooseshit adorn the pathways
in
this a modern
life-skills demonstration
on applied adaptability?
Just now at Millennium's end
when all things appear to be
as the great Willy wrote
falling apart,
our geese may have it right:
their centre seems to be
holding nicely
here at the heart of Swan Lake
Executive Estates
meanwhile
high above unspoiled pasture
a mile beyond town limits
a great squadron of the untamed cousins
is straining south toward the killing fields
their congregated voices
an occasional low muttering on the wind
(Copyright
John Unrau 2000. All Rights Reserved.)
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