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A Random Gospel
This book of poems from David Helwig is very different from any of its predecessors. In the title poem, verses from the Christian gospels, chosen each day at random, provide the occasion for that day's poem, which occurs at the intersection of history, chance, and personal experience. The book also contains personal narratives, poems that grow out of the history of black-and-white photography and a translation from the Russian of Anna Akhmatova's Requiem for the women whose men were victims of the Stalinist terror.
103 pages, Paperback
Published November 1, 1998
About the author
David Helwig
111 books6 followersDavid Helwig was a Canadian editor, essayist, memoirist, novelist, poet, short story writer and translator.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 20, 2022
March 25. A grey day to begin with, the air still and chilled,
grey rotted snow on the ground in a shady spots or where it
drifted deep over the course of a long winter. At midmorning,
sun breaks through, a little pale and nebulous, and by noon
the cloud is thinned almost to nothing, and it is a sunny day.
The air is warm.
The first call of a songbird. Or is it a fantasy born of hope?
The surface of the earth is covered with the winter's wreckage,
all the detritus that has been locked in the layers of snow,
and beneath the snow the dried remains of last year's green
growth. The clear comfortable air of the afternoon is haunted
by possible gardens. Last night there was a full moon.
March 25: the feast of the Annunciation. In the renaissance
the year began on this day - the conceptual moment of the
Incarnation.
And the angel came in unto her and said, Hail thou that art
highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou
among women.
* * *
A child is dancing in the single street.
(This is the story where she is always alone.)
What she is dancing is blackness and grief.
(This is the story of what she does not tell.)
She is crushing the world under her small feet.
(No-one can tell how dangerous she is.)
Her eyes are reddened with their emptiness.
(She searches books and find how stories end.)
Somewhere far off a just man is moving toward her.
(She will have long hair and love him almost forever.)
She stands still and knows she can be perfect.
(Once she is a lady there will be no pain.)
* * *
The hills are animate and strange.
Your eyes survey
a landscape as familiar
and startling as a lover's face.
The land is sudden, furred,
inexplicable, heavy with power,
and breathing and quick
with longing, anger, ecstasy.
* * *
That was when only the peaceful dead
were seen to smile. And that was when dim
Leningrad hung there beside
its prisons like a useless limb.
That was when, senseless from pain,
the regiments of convicts came
and went, and when train whistles sang
goodbye - and that was the only song.
Over us stood deathly stars
under the boots, and writhed in blood
under the Black Marias' tires.
* * *
The universe demanded it. It was
the one cure for loss. Until now
kisses mouths could be forgotten.
The clothes of the departed wrapped in tissue,
called them to mind
in such a whimsical, moth-eaten way.
And everyone was en voyage, the air
of the planet all abuzz with awareness
and vanishings, a skitter
of eyes over appearance.
The universe demanded this
reinvention of time into space,
chemistry into vision,
this gimcrack possibility
of adventitious light,
the glimpse made artifact.
It is the one cure for loss.
* * *
You are so intently nervous, and for so long -
and this, and a need to cherish
occasion an eventfulness
in dressing-table drawers
or in a silver box that holds
metal links and studs.
A child's collections and
the posthumous clutter
of closets and back sheds
make a defence against memory's
sentimentality; a bachelor
knows where everything is.
Being worried and meticulous,
not easily at ease, gives
the detailed world its sway
and lets it be. Things
offer their own careful prayer
to the inevitable minutes.
The only way to slow time,
to be safe, is to collect watches.
Live along and concentrate
and breathe quietly. Language
is such a trap until
it is pasted in your scrapbook.
You watch the painter wave hands
and mock dancing, but art occurs
in your city when you see
and can't stop seeing. Keep string,
paper, broken china. These
offer a eucharist of fact.
Biscuits arrive in tins, and
Tuesday or summer will scrape
fingers on a slate until
the air is a long sick whine.
You are nothing but your nervousness.
This is the cost and reward of noticing.
* * *
1
Waiting-room. I write this
in a small hospital
in an old town; elsewhere you
are held in cold storage, deep
in your fabulous stone city.
2
Fire in April, a secret image,
caressed, and now, suddenly, your,
the frozen body taken
by the first element.
* * *
July 31, 1993
It is ephemeral as a moment of the day's
light on unstilled water, the flash
of spider's filament at the clear
edge of what is seen, shining.
Summer is fast, and a stillness.
Old fatnesses, roads of the green harvest.
And, and, the year's rich ready
proliferation of spiders, swinging
at the borders of earthly things
on their tenuous strong threads.
(One tonight above your head,
eight slender filaments, dark and fine
as the few so small silk hairs
on your white bare inner leg.)
It goes on, season seasonable,
sun and the sunset, daily
and superb. This is summer with all
its sudden bright facts, and light
(or so the philosophers tell the gods)
shines although we nap and lose
the afternoon. The sun has its own need
for the green explosion of species,
the familiar grammar, the replacement
of hair by hair, of old desire
by new desire
grey rotted snow on the ground in a shady spots or where it
drifted deep over the course of a long winter. At midmorning,
sun breaks through, a little pale and nebulous, and by noon
the cloud is thinned almost to nothing, and it is a sunny day.
The air is warm.
The first call of a songbird. Or is it a fantasy born of hope?
The surface of the earth is covered with the winter's wreckage,
all the detritus that has been locked in the layers of snow,
and beneath the snow the dried remains of last year's green
growth. The clear comfortable air of the afternoon is haunted
by possible gardens. Last night there was a full moon.
March 25: the feast of the Annunciation. In the renaissance
the year began on this day - the conceptual moment of the
Incarnation.
And the angel came in unto her and said, Hail thou that art
highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou
among women.
- A Messenger, pg. 5
* * *
A child is dancing in the single street.
(This is the story where she is always alone.)
What she is dancing is blackness and grief.
(This is the story of what she does not tell.)
She is crushing the world under her small feet.
(No-one can tell how dangerous she is.)
Her eyes are reddened with their emptiness.
(She searches books and find how stories end.)
Somewhere far off a just man is moving toward her.
(She will have long hair and love him almost forever.)
She stands still and knows she can be perfect.
(Once she is a lady there will be no pain.)
- An Old Story, I, pg. 14
* * *
The hills are animate and strange.
Your eyes survey
a landscape as familiar
and startling as a lover's face.
The land is sudden, furred,
inexplicable, heavy with power,
and breathing and quick
with longing, anger, ecstasy.
- Pisanello: St. George and the Princess, 1. Background, pg. 32
* * *
That was when only the peaceful dead
were seen to smile. And that was when dim
Leningrad hung there beside
its prisons like a useless limb.
That was when, senseless from pain,
the regiments of convicts came
and went, and when train whistles sang
goodbye - and that was the only song.
Over us stood deathly stars
under the boots, and writhed in blood
under the Black Marias' tires.
- Prologue, pg. 44
* * *
The universe demanded it. It was
the one cure for loss. Until now
kisses mouths could be forgotten.
The clothes of the departed wrapped in tissue,
called them to mind
in such a whimsical, moth-eaten way.
And everyone was en voyage, the air
of the planet all abuzz with awareness
and vanishings, a skitter
of eyes over appearance.
The universe demanded this
reinvention of time into space,
chemistry into vision,
this gimcrack possibility
of adventitious light,
the glimpse made artifact.
It is the one cure for loss.
- A Short History of B&W Photography, 1. Invention, pg. 54
* * *
You are so intently nervous, and for so long -
and this, and a need to cherish
occasion an eventfulness
in dressing-table drawers
or in a silver box that holds
metal links and studs.
A child's collections and
the posthumous clutter
of closets and back sheds
make a defence against memory's
sentimentality; a bachelor
knows where everything is.
Being worried and meticulous,
not easily at ease, gives
the detailed world its sway
and lets it be. Things
offer their own careful prayer
to the inevitable minutes.
The only way to slow time,
to be safe, is to collect watches.
Live along and concentrate
and breathe quietly. Language
is such a trap until
it is pasted in your scrapbook.
You watch the painter wave hands
and mock dancing, but art occurs
in your city when you see
and can't stop seeing. Keep string,
paper, broken china. These
offer a eucharist of fact.
Biscuits arrive in tins, and
Tuesday or summer will scrape
fingers on a slate until
the air is a long sick whine.
You are nothing but your nervousness.
This is the cost and reward of noticing.
- Improvisation: The Art of Joseph Cornell, pg. 66-67
* * *
1
Waiting-room. I write this
in a small hospital
in an old town; elsewhere you
are held in cold storage, deep
in your fabulous stone city.
2
Fire in April, a secret image,
caressed, and now, suddenly, your,
the frozen body taken
by the first element.
- For Tom, pg. 75
* * *
July 31, 1993
It is ephemeral as a moment of the day's
light on unstilled water, the flash
of spider's filament at the clear
edge of what is seen, shining.
Summer is fast, and a stillness.
Old fatnesses, roads of the green harvest.
And, and, the year's rich ready
proliferation of spiders, swinging
at the borders of earthly things
on their tenuous strong threads.
(One tonight above your head,
eight slender filaments, dark and fine
as the few so small silk hairs
on your white bare inner leg.)
It goes on, season seasonable,
sun and the sunset, daily
and superb. This is summer with all
its sudden bright facts, and light
(or so the philosophers tell the gods)
shines although we nap and lose
the afternoon. The sun has its own need
for the green explosion of species,
the familiar grammar, the replacement
of hair by hair, of old desire
by new desire
- Five Days, 1, pg. 97
Displaying 1 of 1 review