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Coastlines
Nominee, 1993 A.M. Klein Poetry Award, QSPELL. In this collection of poems by the prize-winning author of Bavarian Shrine and Other Poems, Eric Ormsby lives up to the reputation he has gained as a 'stubbornly unfashionable poet of high achievement' (Montreal Gazette). Coastlines exemplifies the most recent work of an author who produces 'very rich fair' (Gazette) that is 'polished and ornate' (Books in Canada).
48 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1992
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January 28, 2022
In dreams sometimes there is the glamour of
an animal but afterwards,
alphabets emerge and people learn the monikers
reserved from all eternity for things.
The children are in love with etiquettes
and smell the sap inside the winter trees.
Old knuckles whiten on suspended proches.
You have the sense of sunlight where there move
figures of recollection wearing aprons and
a pair of vocal earrings, click of house-shoes,
the comfort of a long-anticipated sigh.
If only recollection could cohere! If only
memory were cogent once again!
The dispersed tatters of an ancient page
resume themselves in the curator's bath,
or an old text millenia-unread
borrows coherence in a scholar's head,
or as at nightfall once, above the Glades,
we witnessed ibises flap up and wheel
like scattered flecks of newsprint whipped by wind
that skim breeze-bellied on warm drafts of air,
a pandemonium of blank white wings,
spiky hysteria of hoots and swerves
that steadily assembled into unisons of
swoops and slow encirclings, the loveliness
a single and concerted curve assumes
when many turn, and turn again, as one,
and so remembrance gathers islands up
and stitches estuaries to the gulf.
* * *
The cracked and spotted photographs
of children dead a century before
pierce us when we look at them.
The glister of an eye
long consigned to cinders and
the maggot's mercies
engages our gaze.
How near these children seem to us
and yet, how intimate with
nothingness, as though for them
the double kingdom lay
already open as a realm of light.
The sureties of hopefulness
burning in their long-dead look
disturb our own uncertainty, refuse
our knowledge of a future that awaits
beyond the borders of the photograph.
We have the superior sense
that we encompass these children in their ignorance
of all that happened since they left their pose,
unless we come to see how they elude
all our displaced solicitude,
their silver and palladium faces clasped
in the fragile grandeur of daguerrotypes.
* * *
In November the grasses discover
Fountains in themselves
That cluster upward toward the long stalks'
Tips and flourish cloudy flowers
That are the oblique colour of the sun.
They look festive, ceremonial, like
Ostrich feathers in a vestibule;
And yet, they seem so public, plumed
For display, and wag from side to side
In the cold breeze that nudges them
Prancingly like horsetails in a stately parade
Or shaggy pompoms brandished
To the booming of a drum.
an animal but afterwards,
alphabets emerge and people learn the monikers
reserved from all eternity for things.
The children are in love with etiquettes
and smell the sap inside the winter trees.
Old knuckles whiten on suspended proches.
You have the sense of sunlight where there move
figures of recollection wearing aprons and
a pair of vocal earrings, click of house-shoes,
the comfort of a long-anticipated sigh.
If only recollection could cohere! If only
memory were cogent once again!
The dispersed tatters of an ancient page
resume themselves in the curator's bath,
or an old text millenia-unread
borrows coherence in a scholar's head,
or as at nightfall once, above the Glades,
we witnessed ibises flap up and wheel
like scattered flecks of newsprint whipped by wind
that skim breeze-bellied on warm drafts of air,
a pandemonium of blank white wings,
spiky hysteria of hoots and swerves
that steadily assembled into unisons of
swoops and slow encirclings, the loveliness
a single and concerted curve assumes
when many turn, and turn again, as one,
and so remembrance gathers islands up
and stitches estuaries to the gulf.
- Remembrance, for Bruce, pg. 12
* * *
The cracked and spotted photographs
of children dead a century before
pierce us when we look at them.
The glister of an eye
long consigned to cinders and
the maggot's mercies
engages our gaze.
How near these children seem to us
and yet, how intimate with
nothingness, as though for them
the double kingdom lay
already open as a realm of light.
The sureties of hopefulness
burning in their long-dead look
disturb our own uncertainty, refuse
our knowledge of a future that awaits
beyond the borders of the photograph.
We have the superior sense
that we encompass these children in their ignorance
of all that happened since they left their pose,
unless we come to see how they elude
all our displaced solicitude,
their silver and palladium faces clasped
in the fragile grandeur of daguerrotypes.
- Old Photographs of Children, pg. 35
* * *
In November the grasses discover
Fountains in themselves
That cluster upward toward the long stalks'
Tips and flourish cloudy flowers
That are the oblique colour of the sun.
They look festive, ceremonial, like
Ostrich feathers in a vestibule;
And yet, they seem so public, plumed
For display, and wag from side to side
In the cold breeze that nudges them
Prancingly like horsetails in a stately parade
Or shaggy pompoms brandished
To the booming of a drum.
- Grasses in November, pg. 45
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