Читать книгу Now You Care - Di Brandt - Страница 6

after Stan Douglas

1

Breathing yellow air

here, at the heart of the dream

of the new world,

the bones of old horses and dead Indians

and lush virgin land, dripping with fruit

and the promise of wheat,

overlaid with glass and steel

and the dream of speed:

all these our bodies

crushed to appease

the 400 & 1 gods

of the Superhighway,

NAFTA, we worship you,

hallowed be your name,

here, where we are scattered

like dust or rain in ditches,

the ghosts of passenger pigeons

clouding the silver towered sky,

the future clogged in the arteries

of the potholed city,

Tecumseh, come back to us from your green grave, sing us your song of bravery on the lit bridge over the black river, splayed with grief over the loss of its ancient rainbow coloured fish swollen joy. Who shall be fisher king over this poisoned country, whose borders have become a mockery, blowing the world to bits with cars and cars and trucks and electricity and cars, who will cover our splintered bones with earth and blood, who will sing us back into –

2

See how there’s no one going to Windsor,

only everyone coming from?

Maybe they’ve been evacuated,

maybe there’s nuclear war,

maybe when we get there we’ll be the only ones.

See all those trucks coming toward us,

why else would there be rush hour on the 401

on a Thursday at nine o’clock in the evening?

I counted 200 trucks and 300 cars

and that’s just since London.

See that strange light in the sky over Detroit,

see how dark it is over Windsor?

You know how people keep disappearing,

you know all those babies born with deformities,

you know how organ thieves follow tourists

on the highway and grab them at night

on the motel turnoffs,

you know they’re staging those big highway accidents

to increase the number of organ donors?

My brother knew one of the guys paid to do it,

$100,000 for twenty bodies

but only if the livers are good.

See that car that’s been following us for the last hour,

see the pink glow of its headlights in the mirror?

That’s how you know.

Maybe we should turn around,

maybe we should duck so they can’t see us,

maybe it’s too late,

maybe we’re already dead,

maybe the war is over,

maybe we’re the only ones alive.

3

So there I am, sniffing around

the railroad tracks

in my usual quest for a bit of wildness,

weeds, something untinkered with,

goldenrod, purple aster, burdocks,

defiant against creosote,

my prairie blood surging

in recognition and fellow feeling,

and o god, missing my dog,

and hey, what do you know,

there’s treasure here

among these forgotten weeds,

so this is where they hang out,

all those women’s breasts

cut off to keep our lawns green

and dandelion free,

here they are, dancing

their breastly ghost dance,

stirring up a slight wind in fact

and behaving for all the world

like dandelions in seed,

their featherwinged purple nipples

oozing sticky milk,

so what am I supposed to do,

pretend I haven’t seen them,

or like I don’t care

about all these missing breasts,

how they just vanish

from our aching chests

and no one says a word,

and we just strap on fake ones

and the dandelions keep dying,

and the grass on our lawns

gets greener and greener

and greener

4

This gold and red autumn heat,

this glorious tree splendour,

splayed out for sheer pleasure

over asphalt and concrete,

ribbons of dark desire

driving us madly toward death,

perverse, presiding over

five o’clock traffic

like the queens on Church Street

grand in their carstopping

high heels and blond wigs

and blue makeup, darling,

so nice to see you, and what,

dear one, exactly was the rush?

Or oceans, vast beyond ridicule

or question, and who cares if it’s

much too hot for November,

isn’t it gorgeous, darling,

and even here, in this

most polluted spit of land

in Canada, with its heart

attack and cancer rates,

the trees can still knock

you out with their loveliness

so you just wanna drop

everything and weep, or laugh,

or gather up the gorgeous

leaves, falling, and throw yourself

into them like a dead man,

or a kid, or a dog,

5

O the brave deeds of men

M*E*N, that is, they with phalli

dangling from their thighs,

how they dazzle me with

their daring exploits

every time I cross the Detroit River

from down under, I mean,

who else could have given

themselves so grandly,

obediently, to this water god,

this fierce charlatan,

this glutton for sailors and young boys,

risking limbs and lives, wordlessly

wrestling primordial mud,

so that we, mothers and maids,

could go shopping across the border

and save ourselves twenty minutes

coming and going, chatting about

this and that, our feet never

leaving the car, never mind

the mouth of the tunnel

is haunted by bits and fragments

of shattered bone and looking

every time like Diana’s bridge

in Paris, this is really grand, isn’t it,

riding our cars under the river

and coming out the other side

illegal aliens, needing passports,

and feeling like we accomplished

something, snatched from

our busy lives, just being there