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Listening: The Last Poems of Margaret Avison
A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year
Margaret Avison was widely acknowledged as one of Canada’s foremost poets. Taut, sublime, subtle, and crystalline, the poems in her brilliant new collection, published posthumously, showcase Avison at her best, and constitute the final chapter in an extraordinary artistic legacy that spanned more than forty years.
Margaret Avison was widely acknowledged as one of Canada’s foremost poets. Taut, sublime, subtle, and crystalline, the poems in her brilliant new collection, published posthumously, showcase Avison at her best, and constitute the final chapter in an extraordinary artistic legacy that spanned more than forty years.
- GenresPoetry
88 pages, Paperback
First published March 31, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 23, 2022
Our language You
speak! "They
are
His words," a kindly
elder assured her
granddaughter, as though
unwilling to put something on
me, not able not to.
The "words she singled
out, I
listened to; they had
for me no heft.
Words up in the
air they'd seemed, blown eastward with
the early spring winds. When I am old
perhaps I will be savouring the
squirrelling words at play in
my innermost branches?
Once, for good, came the discovery.
Print privately can be-
come Voice, speaking
words the lost
grandmother
kept long ago, in-
structing me, hoping
some murmur down the years,
some lilt of holy love
would linger till I too
knew. Those
words, still hers, now
murmur within, massy as a
golden heirloom,
astonish me with how
real words are. Oh
yes, I can skid
over surfaces and
syllables. But "real
words" are the
onces Your mouth-parts, throat
and breath
weigh in with, meanings
soundlessly deep forever.
* * *
The last two daffodils
are dying on my table.
What were once petals grope
for water, can no longer
sip, though they stand in water,
must grope the air for more.
They have transmuted from
flower to scrawny
fingers, an old woman's in
raggedy silk gloves.
The only future for
a dying flower is
compost-mash: its lingering
memorial, when the first
eggshell dawn
lifts up a new
horizon, all
in stemless daffodils
flowering.
* * *
Why are we so
often not
any different? Oh there are
changes nobody tried to
make happen but on a
workaday level, never from
silence's special
place where it's as if
periwinkle faces play at
being zenith:
up, up so
mirror-silent the
glassy dimness shows the
one far flower, here, or
almost blindingly
aloft, as well.
* * *
How could the runners-after the
crowds running ahead, how could any of them
have known they'd find them-
selves there? I.e., at the
hangman's side? No,
on it? One by
one in the exhausted
afterwards, fidgeting, miserable, at
home, each had to find him-
self immured with the
undeservedly dead, for good.
What's "good"?
Springtime? The cat just
brought me a chewed
fledgling, his love-token.
The afterward
is a forever never knowing how
the cords of who and what we are
entwined and twisted so. I am
implicit in a
levigating of the incon-
venient scree, grinding it down with
the promise di-
versely given all of us.
Giver, I know now, anyone's
survival is to be on
Your side. If it is
not too late, may the many
be there, not to be eased, but to learn how
losing is not
negation. Oh it is that, but
inside-out, under the
merciful down-side up of,
for example, sky.
* * *
The eternal one
can winkle out
an unacknowledged
doubt, or a hedged memory
in the dim way of being
between His timelessnesses.
His nestlings are
sheltered within
deep-bosomed trees;
these raise soft domes, care
for the air. We breathe.
Underneath, when
stunned by sunmelt
their felt dimness is
shimmery rest.
Unquestioning at last,
much, lost or unremembered,
murmurs peacefully
under His
timeless largesse.
* * *
The pot who called the kettle black
ignored the risk of quid pro quo:
so when convivial chatter lagged
in came the tea-tray but NO TEA.
When kettle turned the tables, many
preferred the summer salad plate
though steaming bowls of stew were ready.
Still their last choice was - lemonade!
When pot and kettle both can pull
their weight, at need - and none, or few,
are ever indispensable -
then selfless service may ensue.
The fire that blackened pot would blacken kettle too!
* * *
The lat leaves, linen-
pale but
large, stir on a
sapling's upper
tremulous limb.
Bare brambly shrubbery
protects them from
stinging November gusts.
Solstice will come, new
sunlight to
finger sapling and shrub,
invigorate observer and
observed. Each is absorbed
in this moving but usual
processional of being.
speak! "They
are
His words," a kindly
elder assured her
granddaughter, as though
unwilling to put something on
me, not able not to.
The "words she singled
out, I
listened to; they had
for me no heft.
Words up in the
air they'd seemed, blown eastward with
the early spring winds. When I am old
perhaps I will be savouring the
squirrelling words at play in
my innermost branches?
Once, for good, came the discovery.
Print privately can be-
come Voice, speaking
words the lost
grandmother
kept long ago, in-
structing me, hoping
some murmur down the years,
some lilt of holy love
would linger till I too
knew. Those
words, still hers, now
murmur within, massy as a
golden heirloom,
astonish me with how
real words are. Oh
yes, I can skid
over surfaces and
syllables. But "real
words" are the
onces Your mouth-parts, throat
and breath
weigh in with, meanings
soundlessly deep forever.
- Listening, for Grandma, pg. 3-4
* * *
The last two daffodils
are dying on my table.
What were once petals grope
for water, can no longer
sip, though they stand in water,
must grope the air for more.
They have transmuted from
flower to scrawny
fingers, an old woman's in
raggedy silk gloves.
The only future for
a dying flower is
compost-mash: its lingering
memorial, when the first
eggshell dawn
lifts up a new
horizon, all
in stemless daffodils
flowering.
- Still Life, pg. 15
* * *
Why are we so
often not
any different? Oh there are
changes nobody tried to
make happen but on a
workaday level, never from
silence's special
place where it's as if
periwinkle faces play at
being zenith:
up, up so
mirror-silent the
glassy dimness shows the
one far flower, here, or
almost blindingly
aloft, as well.
- Metamorphosis, pg. 28
* * *
How could the runners-after the
crowds running ahead, how could any of them
have known they'd find them-
selves there? I.e., at the
hangman's side? No,
on it? One by
one in the exhausted
afterwards, fidgeting, miserable, at
home, each had to find him-
self immured with the
undeservedly dead, for good.
What's "good"?
Springtime? The cat just
brought me a chewed
fledgling, his love-token.
The afterward
is a forever never knowing how
the cords of who and what we are
entwined and twisted so. I am
implicit in a
levigating of the incon-
venient scree, grinding it down with
the promise di-
versely given all of us.
Giver, I know now, anyone's
survival is to be on
Your side. If it is
not too late, may the many
be there, not to be eased, but to learn how
losing is not
negation. Oh it is that, but
inside-out, under the
merciful down-side up of,
for example, sky.
- Witnesses, pg. 36-37
* * *
The eternal one
can winkle out
an unacknowledged
doubt, or a hedged memory
in the dim way of being
between His timelessnesses.
His nestlings are
sheltered within
deep-bosomed trees;
these raise soft domes, care
for the air. We breathe.
Underneath, when
stunned by sunmelt
their felt dimness is
shimmery rest.
Unquestioning at last,
much, lost or unremembered,
murmurs peacefully
under His
timeless largesse.
- The Eternal One, pg. 56
* * *
The pot who called the kettle black
ignored the risk of quid pro quo:
so when convivial chatter lagged
in came the tea-tray but NO TEA.
When kettle turned the tables, many
preferred the summer salad plate
though steaming bowls of stew were ready.
Still their last choice was - lemonade!
When pot and kettle both can pull
their weight, at need - and none, or few,
are ever indispensable -
then selfless service may ensue.
The fire that blackened pot would blacken kettle too!
- Moral Tale, Kitchen Variety, pg. 67
* * *
The lat leaves, linen-
pale but
large, stir on a
sapling's upper
tremulous limb.
Bare brambly shrubbery
protects them from
stinging November gusts.
Solstice will come, new
sunlight to
finger sapling and shrub,
invigorate observer and
observed. Each is absorbed
in this moving but usual
processional of being.
- Communal Care, pg. 72
December 25, 2023
Let stillness gather down at last,
then,
steeped in the oceanic
peacefulness of
greens, of leafiness,
of living and
listening.
then,
steeped in the oceanic
peacefulness of
greens, of leafiness,
of living and
listening.
June 24, 2010
The poem I particularly liked was entitled "Safe But Shakey". I interpreted it as being about the road we choose to take in life.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews