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Talking Prophet Blues
Book by Helwig, Maggie
77 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1989
About the author
Maggie Helwig
32 books22 followersMaggie Helwig (born 1961) is a Canadian poet, novelist, social justice activist, and Anglican priest.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 23, 2022
If you could fold your soul like leaves
and disappear.
Coughing in the English rain
too pale and far too thin, living
on cigarettes and headaches
standing in possible motion
on this non-existent line.
The only thing you do
is what you have to do. The only thing you know
is that it will be spring in England
when you die.
* * *
(And here am I also, sitting
in a Toronto restaurant, crying, Simone, Simone.
Here, now, we are dying
of needing each other, dear dead sister
along, alone, gripping electric-shock hands in the void
by the bright red exit sign and the radio trees.
Sitting in Toronto, crying.
This
is not poetry, this is not
what I call poetry, this is the demon Hunger.
My dear, my dear
I will cry for your torture here in Toronto.
Clutching, your pain, electric light,
listen, the blaze in the darkness -
Simone, Simone)
* * *
Small one, Simone-Adolphine,
may you have flowers. Blue French flowers, may they fall
on your thin hands.
(And this, I know, is sentimental. Mrs. Francis
throwing the little tricolour bouquet into the grace.
Silly, female, British. All is well.)
Velvet-eyed child with midnight hair
laughing in forests.
Sister, I give you what I can.
Pray for me, sister.
Beautiful child, will you sing?
* * *
I do not dislike
this intelligent desert, this
Toronto where I am.
Perhaps I would choose the cold lake
and the trees at the cottage, or the grey ice
of the long streets of Leningrad.
But I have not chosen so;
so I assume
I do not wish it.
I do avoid
the savage children still waiting
by the school wall.
* * *
If I might explain.
There are places I have been
before the music; the sound of rain
on the lake, or the wind in branches, the lean
throats of the geese are still
not what I mean.
The space we are hasty to fill
is always the shape of nature - to kill
is the rational shape of our death.
I do not wish it. I will
explain if I might; the breath
is a movement between the flesh and empty space.
Suppose that between Toronto and Nazareth
you should see reflected in the water your own face.
We must find this place.
Have you seen it shine from the purity of the machine?
Have you known it in the broken pace
of strange and skeletal music? What I have seen
I cannot explain; but I am such
as I know not - if I were objective, inarguable, keen.
I may explode if you touch.
* * *
One drives in Toronto at night. Among
the weird ambivalent voices of Yonge Street
neon tones of embarrassed wire, or
in the darkness, further.
On the highway, certain
restaurants puddle in light, where one
drinks coffee on plastic seats
and listens.
Many things
are perfect only in memory.
This is the result
of intractable commitment.
Or one may walk
silent, silent suburban blocks
to the stores that never close
for milk and biscuits.
I have a conception that lacks all possible
means of reproduction. But
I praise the human voice.
* * *
The cycle of mystery
is turning, turning
on and into me, the time
is not so long, and they are still burning
the innocent leaves.
Nobody grieves for the living. Listen,
the sacrifice rears up
at unexpected moments. Ritual and ecstasy
the rational passionate metal are
the unicorn offspring only of emptiness.
Will you be driven
or will you dare?
To be pure creature purely, to create
your divinity between
the flesh and breath, to mean
one thing, one contemplation - listen
this is blood, this
is not easy.
Walk in the towering
walls of glass. In the epilogue
persons and actions no further part.
Transcendence is not art, it is
a technology of
the mangled heart.
* * *
There was a name I lost in the smog
like a white stone
and I broke the bones of all my fingers, one by one,
to mark my smug betrayals, all the times
I smiled and said
that it had come again. Red hearts
revolve in double spirals round my spine
and pigeons mate in the slush - I wait
for the death of my much speaking
comfortable voices.
The choice
is to die or to die.
But do not think
that this is a conclusion.
Have you seen the stars in February
have you seen
how Venus is huge as ice?
Crippled like ceramics, I
stepped off a cliff and found
that I was walking in the sky
and all is still unfinished.
and disappear.
Coughing in the English rain
too pale and far too thin, living
on cigarettes and headaches
standing in possible motion
on this non-existent line.
The only thing you do
is what you have to do. The only thing you know
is that it will be spring in England
when you die.
- pg. 10
* * *
(And here am I also, sitting
in a Toronto restaurant, crying, Simone, Simone.
Here, now, we are dying
of needing each other, dear dead sister
along, alone, gripping electric-shock hands in the void
by the bright red exit sign and the radio trees.
Sitting in Toronto, crying.
This
is not poetry, this is not
what I call poetry, this is the demon Hunger.
My dear, my dear
I will cry for your torture here in Toronto.
Clutching, your pain, electric light,
listen, the blaze in the darkness -
Simone, Simone)
- pg. 16
* * *
Small one, Simone-Adolphine,
may you have flowers. Blue French flowers, may they fall
on your thin hands.
(And this, I know, is sentimental. Mrs. Francis
throwing the little tricolour bouquet into the grace.
Silly, female, British. All is well.)
Velvet-eyed child with midnight hair
laughing in forests.
Sister, I give you what I can.
Pray for me, sister.
Beautiful child, will you sing?
- pg. 21
* * *
I do not dislike
this intelligent desert, this
Toronto where I am.
Perhaps I would choose the cold lake
and the trees at the cottage, or the grey ice
of the long streets of Leningrad.
But I have not chosen so;
so I assume
I do not wish it.
I do avoid
the savage children still waiting
by the school wall.
- pg. 29
* * *
If I might explain.
There are places I have been
before the music; the sound of rain
on the lake, or the wind in branches, the lean
throats of the geese are still
not what I mean.
The space we are hasty to fill
is always the shape of nature - to kill
is the rational shape of our death.
I do not wish it. I will
explain if I might; the breath
is a movement between the flesh and empty space.
Suppose that between Toronto and Nazareth
you should see reflected in the water your own face.
We must find this place.
Have you seen it shine from the purity of the machine?
Have you known it in the broken pace
of strange and skeletal music? What I have seen
I cannot explain; but I am such
as I know not - if I were objective, inarguable, keen.
I may explode if you touch.
- Quartet for Strings, pg. 39
* * *
One drives in Toronto at night. Among
the weird ambivalent voices of Yonge Street
neon tones of embarrassed wire, or
in the darkness, further.
On the highway, certain
restaurants puddle in light, where one
drinks coffee on plastic seats
and listens.
Many things
are perfect only in memory.
This is the result
of intractable commitment.
Or one may walk
silent, silent suburban blocks
to the stores that never close
for milk and biscuits.
I have a conception that lacks all possible
means of reproduction. But
I praise the human voice.
- Salisbury Pavan, pg. 49
* * *
The cycle of mystery
is turning, turning
on and into me, the time
is not so long, and they are still burning
the innocent leaves.
Nobody grieves for the living. Listen,
the sacrifice rears up
at unexpected moments. Ritual and ecstasy
the rational passionate metal are
the unicorn offspring only of emptiness.
Will you be driven
or will you dare?
To be pure creature purely, to create
your divinity between
the flesh and breath, to mean
one thing, one contemplation - listen
this is blood, this
is not easy.
Walk in the towering
walls of glass. In the epilogue
persons and actions no further part.
Transcendence is not art, it is
a technology of
the mangled heart.
- Das Marienleben, pg. 54
* * *
There was a name I lost in the smog
like a white stone
and I broke the bones of all my fingers, one by one,
to mark my smug betrayals, all the times
I smiled and said
that it had come again. Red hearts
revolve in double spirals round my spine
and pigeons mate in the slush - I wait
for the death of my much speaking
comfortable voices.
The choice
is to die or to die.
But do not think
that this is a conclusion.
Have you seen the stars in February
have you seen
how Venus is huge as ice?
Crippled like ceramics, I
stepped off a cliff and found
that I was walking in the sky
and all is still unfinished.
- Valentinus, pg. 70
Displaying 1 of 1 review