Читать книгу Towards the Last Spike - E. J. Pratt - Страница 3

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("Oats—a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people."—Dr. Samuel Johnson. "True, but where will you find such horses, where such men?"—Lord Elibank's reply as recorded by Sir Walter Scott.)

Oatmeal was in their blood and in their names.

Thrift was the title of their catechism.

It governed all things but their mess of porridge

Which, when it struck the hydrochloric acid

With treacle and skim-milk, became a mash.

Entering the duodenum, it broke up

Into amino acids: then the liver

Took on its natural job as carpenter:

Foreheads grew into cliffs, jaws into juts.

The meal, so changed, engaged the follicles:

Eyebrows came out as gorse, the beards as thistles,

And the chest-hair the fell of Grampian rams.

It stretched and vulcanized the human span:

Nonagenarians worked and thrived upon it.

Out of such chemistry run through by genes,

The food released its fearsome racial products:—

The power to strike a bargain like a foe,

To win an argument upon a burr,

Invest the language with a Bannockburn,

Culloden or the warnings of Lochiel,

Weave loyalties and rivalries in tartans,

Present for the amazement of the world

Kilts and the civilized barbaric Fling,

And pipes which, when they acted on the mash,

Fermented lullabies to Scots wha hae.

Their names were like a battle-muster—Angus

(He of the Shops) and Fleming (of the Transit),

Hector (of the Kicking Horse), Dawson, "Cromarty" Ross, and Beatty (Ulster Scot), Bruce, Allan, Gait and Douglas, and the "twa"— Stephen (Craigellachie)[1] and Smith (Strathcona)— Who would one day climb from their Gaelic hide-outs, Take off their plaids and wrap them round the mountains. And then the everlasting tread of the Macs, Vanguard, centre and rear, their roving eyes On summits, rivers, contracts, beaver, ledgers; Their ears cocked to the skirl of Sir John A., The general of the patronymic march.

[1] "Stand Fast, Craigellachie," the war-cry of the Clan Grant, named after a rock in the Spey Valley, and used as a cable message from Stephen in London to the Directors in Montreal.

(Sir John revolving round the Terms of Union with British Columbia. Time, late at night.)

Insomnia had ripped the bed-sheets from him

Night after night. How long was this to last?

Confederation had not played this kind

Of trickery on him. That was rough indeed,

So gravelled, that a man might call for rest

And take it for a life accomplishment.

It was his laurel though some of the leaves

Had dried. But this would be a longer tug

Of war which needed for his team thick wrists

And calloused fingers, heavy heels to dig

Into the earth and hold—men with bull's beef

Upon their ribs. Had he himself the wind,

The anchor-waist to peg at the rope's end?

'Twas bad enough to have these questions hit

The waking mind: 'twas much worse when he dozed;

For goblins had a way of pinching him,

Slapping a nightmare on to dwindling snoozes.

They put him and his team into a tug

More real than life. He heard a judge call out—

"Teams settle on the rope and take the strain!"

And with the coaches' heave, the running welts

Reddened his palms, and then the gruelling backlock Inscribed its indentations on his shoulders. This kind of burn he knew he had to stand; It was the game's routine; the other fire Was what he feared the most for it could bake him— That white dividing rag tied to the rope Above the centre pole had with each heave Wavered with chances equal. With the backlock, Despite the legs of Tupper and Cartier, The western anchor dragged; the other side Remorselessly was gaining, holding, gaining. No sleep could stand this strain and, with the nightmare Delivered of its colt, Macdonald woke.

Tired with the midnight toss, lock-jawed with yawns,

He left the bed and, shuffling to the window,

He opened it. The air would cool him off

And soothe his shoulder burns. He felt his ribs:

Strange, nothing broken—how those crazy drowses

Had made the fictions tangle with the facts!

He must unscramble them with steady hands.

Those Ranges pirouetting in his dreams

Had their own knack of standing still in light,

Revealing peaks whose known triangulation

Had to be read in prose severity.

Seizing a telescope, he swept the skies,

The north-south drift, a self-illumined chart.

Under Polaris was the Arctic Sea

And the sub-Arctic gates well stocked with names:

Hudson, Davis, Baffin, Frobisher;

And in his own day Franklin, Ross and Parry

Of the Canadian Archipelago;

Kellett, McClure, McClintock, of The Search. Those straits and bays had long been kicked by keels, And flags had fluttered on the Capes that fired His youth, making familiar the unknown. What though the odds were nine to one against, And the Dead March was undertoning trumpets, There was enough of strychnine in the names To make him flip a penny for the risk, Though he had palmed the coin reflectively Before he threw and watched it come down heads. That stellar path looked too much like a road map Upon his wall—the roads all led to market— The north-south route. He lit a candle, held It to a second map full of blank spaces And arrows pointing west. Disturbed, he turned The lens up to the zenith, followed the course Tracked by a cloud of stars that would not keep Their posts—Capella, Perseus, were reeling; Low in the north-west, Cassiopeia Was qualmish, leaning on her starboard arm-rest, And Aries was chasing, butting Cygnus, Just diving. Doubts and hopes struck at each other. Why did those constellations look so much Like blizzards? And what lay beyond the blizzards?

'Twas chilly at the window. He returned

To bed and savoured soporific terms:

Superior, the Red River, Selkirk, Prairie, Port Moody and Pacific. Chewing them, He spat out Rocky grit before he swallowed. Selkirk! This had the sweetest taste. Ten years Before, the Highland crofters had subscribed Their names in a memorial for the Rails. Sir John reviewed the story of the struggle, That four months' journey from their native land— The Atlantic through the Straits to Hudson Bay, Then the Hayes River to Lake Winnipeg Up to the Forks of the Assiniboine. He could make use of that—just what he needed, A Western version of the Arctic daring, Romance and realism, double dose. How long ago? Why, this is '71. Those fellows came the time Napoleon Was on the steppes. For sixty years they fought The seasons, 'hoppers, drought, hail, wind and snow; Survived the massacre at Seven Oaks, The "Pemmican War" and the Red River floods. They wanted now the Road—those pioneers Who lived by spades instead of beaver traps. Most excellent word that, pioneers! Sir John Snuggled himself into his sheets, rolling The word around his tongue, a theme for song, Or for a peroration to a speech.