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Droppings from Heaven
- GenresPoetry
112 pages, Paperback
First published September 15, 1979
11 people want to read
About the author
Irving Layton
85 books40 followersPoet, Teacher.
Born as Israel Pincu Lazarovitch, author Irving Layton immigrated to Canada in 1913, as a baby, his family settling on the infamous St. Urbain Street in the city of Montreal. In the heavily French-speaking province of Quebec, some locals were weary of English foreigners and Jewish families, however, the Lazarovitches adapted to the city where a great Canadian literary scene flourished, producing several English (Canadian) authors such as Mordecai Richler, Leonard Cohen and Louis Dudek.
In the early 1930's, Irving Layton received a Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture from MacDonald College. In 1946, he received his M.A. in Political Science. He also began teaching English, History, and Political Science at the Jewish parochial high school, Herzliah, in 1949. He taught modern English and American poetry at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia) and worked as a tenured professor at York University in the 1970s. He lectured occasionally at McGill University in Political Science. He taught English and Literature at the Jewish Public Library.
Irving Layton often recited his works at readings and travelled the world doing so, gaining fame and popularity. Over the course of his life, Irving Layton received many awards and honours for his writing. In 1959, Irving Layton received the Governor-General's Award for "A Red Carpet for the Sun." He was titled an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1976. In 1981, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature by Italy and South Korea. He also received the Petrarch Award for Poetry.
Well loved, Irving led a full life surrounded by students, friends and family. He was married four times - to Faye Lynch, Harriet Bernstein, Annette Pottier and Betty Sutherland. He also lived with a woman named Aviva Cantor for several years. He fathered four children during his life named Max, Naomi, David and Samantha Clara.
Born as Israel Pincu Lazarovitch, author Irving Layton immigrated to Canada in 1913, as a baby, his family settling on the infamous St. Urbain Street in the city of Montreal. In the heavily French-speaking province of Quebec, some locals were weary of English foreigners and Jewish families, however, the Lazarovitches adapted to the city where a great Canadian literary scene flourished, producing several English (Canadian) authors such as Mordecai Richler, Leonard Cohen and Louis Dudek.
In the early 1930's, Irving Layton received a Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture from MacDonald College. In 1946, he received his M.A. in Political Science. He also began teaching English, History, and Political Science at the Jewish parochial high school, Herzliah, in 1949. He taught modern English and American poetry at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia) and worked as a tenured professor at York University in the 1970s. He lectured occasionally at McGill University in Political Science. He taught English and Literature at the Jewish Public Library.
Irving Layton often recited his works at readings and travelled the world doing so, gaining fame and popularity. Over the course of his life, Irving Layton received many awards and honours for his writing. In 1959, Irving Layton received the Governor-General's Award for "A Red Carpet for the Sun." He was titled an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1976. In 1981, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature by Italy and South Korea. He also received the Petrarch Award for Poetry.
Well loved, Irving led a full life surrounded by students, friends and family. He was married four times - to Faye Lynch, Harriet Bernstein, Annette Pottier and Betty Sutherland. He also lived with a woman named Aviva Cantor for several years. He fathered four children during his life named Max, Naomi, David and Samantha Clara.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 21, 2022
This is a finger
This is an eye
Even a small cut causes pain, afterwards soreness;
the terror comes when a bone-shattering bullet
enters the neck, the groin
or the blood rushes after the retreating knife
The thought of death,
of being suddenly reduced to nothing
makes the lips go white
You must say to yourself
this is not film, this is real
and it's happening to a man
who was once an infant and cried in the dark
Those are real intestines
spilling out into his hand;
the pain and terror are real
Let's begin again
This is a finger
This is an eye
* * *
Everyone was saying
this was the coldest winter in 75 years;
penniless and freezing
I escorted my girl to the fire escape
Since she used to diaphragm
I pulled out in time
and we listened to the droppings
that fell on the frozen ground
Both of us wondering
whether the warm love-juice struck it
as hard assaulting pellets
or miniature stilettos
* * *
The roadside daisies
bend over the white line
like braced runners
waiting for the pistol shot
I walk off with their yellowness
- bright sunspots in my soul
When I come back this way
they'll still be rooted to the same spot,
waiting for the pistol to go off
I'll tell them the tree'd hillsides
look like the dyed fell of sheep
* * *
I can make poems only out of chaos,
out of hurt and pain.
I sing loudest when my throat is cut.
And saying this,
I handed her the razorblade
she lovingly slashed my throat with.
After, when she was sluicing the blood
into the enamelled urn
my sorrow was that I could not thank her.
* * *
I watch the popping black froth
making it
towards the open vat
waiting below
The bubbles, opening and closing
their mouths
with a loud plop
And I think of Lenin
at the Finland Station
of Hitler at a Nuremberg rally
of Mussolini
posturing on his Roman balcony
And that Franco and Stalin
though no orators
made it to the same vat
* * *
A black pocket comb
and a small bird
lying side by side
off the road
Both covered by a fine dust
and looking unwanted,
the comb no less useless
than the dead bird
Dropped out of someone's pocket
fallen out of the air,
their beauty is the stillness they make
lying in the road dust there
* * *
At that instant I hated him for saying:
"The social problem is insoluble,
the universe itself having posed it,
and rich and poor are eternal entities
in a tragic melodrama that has no ending.
"Till the end of time the slums of Brasilia
will be with us, their squat ugliness setting off
the beauty of neighbourly white mansions,
the famished bodies of the denizens providing
laboratories for the study of bone disease."
I was ready to knock him off his lounge chair,
so grating were his callous words
beside the luxurious swimming pool where
he and I were drowsing under the sun
when he startled me by saying quietly:
"God's the terrorist that should be bought
to justice, who slays thousands by disease and hunger
and does so day after day." Perhaps he was unveiling
the new piety or merely clacking his gums bu the look
he threw me froze me like the prick of cold steel.
* * *
He drowns his fear of death
in his enemy's life-blood
and with smoking hands
pulls down peace
from the glaring skies
Under a blanket of carnage
that hides him from the terror
tormenting him without cease
he plagues himself
with dreams of sainthood
Soul encased in rotting flesh
god with an asshole
he shapes the humbling stool
into catafalque and bomb
into immortal poem
* * *
I want to burn all books
that smell of gentle resignation;
I want to be able to kill a thug
with a karate chop
I want my loins
to be bronzed by the sun,
every muscle in my body
hard and lean
And to leave anyone who's met me
by chance or intent
as if he'd had an encounter
with a famished tiger
* * *
Only when I learned Nature
was as turbulent as I
and mirrored my own unrest,
my own senseless confusion
did I embrace as All High
the Divine Scatologist
whose poised compassion and calm
I saw was the Buddha's smile
on the face of nullity
encompassing earth and sky,
ringing the One and Many.
This is an eye
Even a small cut causes pain, afterwards soreness;
the terror comes when a bone-shattering bullet
enters the neck, the groin
or the blood rushes after the retreating knife
The thought of death,
of being suddenly reduced to nothing
makes the lips go white
You must say to yourself
this is not film, this is real
and it's happening to a man
who was once an infant and cried in the dark
Those are real intestines
spilling out into his hand;
the pain and terror are real
Let's begin again
This is a finger
This is an eye
- The Lesson, pg. 16
* * *
Everyone was saying
this was the coldest winter in 75 years;
penniless and freezing
I escorted my girl to the fire escape
Since she used to diaphragm
I pulled out in time
and we listened to the droppings
that fell on the frozen ground
Both of us wondering
whether the warm love-juice struck it
as hard assaulting pellets
or miniature stilettos
- Droppings from Heaven, pg. 26
* * *
The roadside daisies
bend over the white line
like braced runners
waiting for the pistol shot
I walk off with their yellowness
- bright sunspots in my soul
When I come back this way
they'll still be rooted to the same spot,
waiting for the pistol to go off
I'll tell them the tree'd hillsides
look like the dyed fell of sheep
- Transcendence, pg. 34
* * *
I can make poems only out of chaos,
out of hurt and pain.
I sing loudest when my throat is cut.
And saying this,
I handed her the razorblade
she lovingly slashed my throat with.
After, when she was sluicing the blood
into the enamelled urn
my sorrow was that I could not thank her.
- Poet and Woman, pg. 44
* * *
I watch the popping black froth
making it
towards the open vat
waiting below
The bubbles, opening and closing
their mouths
with a loud plop
And I think of Lenin
at the Finland Station
of Hitler at a Nuremberg rally
of Mussolini
posturing on his Roman balcony
And that Franco and Stalin
though no orators
made it to the same vat
- Froth, pg. 51
* * *
A black pocket comb
and a small bird
lying side by side
off the road
Both covered by a fine dust
and looking unwanted,
the comb no less useless
than the dead bird
Dropped out of someone's pocket
fallen out of the air,
their beauty is the stillness they make
lying in the road dust there
- Stillness, pg. 65
* * *
At that instant I hated him for saying:
"The social problem is insoluble,
the universe itself having posed it,
and rich and poor are eternal entities
in a tragic melodrama that has no ending.
"Till the end of time the slums of Brasilia
will be with us, their squat ugliness setting off
the beauty of neighbourly white mansions,
the famished bodies of the denizens providing
laboratories for the study of bone disease."
I was ready to knock him off his lounge chair,
so grating were his callous words
beside the luxurious swimming pool where
he and I were drowsing under the sun
when he startled me by saying quietly:
"God's the terrorist that should be bought
to justice, who slays thousands by disease and hunger
and does so day after day." Perhaps he was unveiling
the new piety or merely clacking his gums bu the look
he threw me froze me like the prick of cold steel.
- The New Piety, pg. 76
* * *
He drowns his fear of death
in his enemy's life-blood
and with smoking hands
pulls down peace
from the glaring skies
Under a blanket of carnage
that hides him from the terror
tormenting him without cease
he plagues himself
with dreams of sainthood
Soul encased in rotting flesh
god with an asshole
he shapes the humbling stool
into catafalque and bomb
into immortal poem
- The Absurd Animal, pg. 85
* * *
I want to burn all books
that smell of gentle resignation;
I want to be able to kill a thug
with a karate chop
I want my loins
to be bronzed by the sun,
every muscle in my body
hard and lean
And to leave anyone who's met me
by chance or intent
as if he'd had an encounter
with a famished tiger
- Prayer for My Old Age, pg. 98
* * *
Only when I learned Nature
was as turbulent as I
and mirrored my own unrest,
my own senseless confusion
did I embrace as All High
the Divine Scatologist
whose poised compassion and calm
I saw was the Buddha's smile
on the face of nullity
encompassing earth and sky,
ringing the One and Many.
- Cosmic Religion, pg. 107
January 7, 2026
I read this slowly in between other books. This one was odd; Layton used a lot of political and historical references I barely understood.
Cool title though.
Cool title though.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews