therefore, into the steps of honour, to carry out this sacrifice?
And die a man? You have, now, in that black night,
you have surrendered that manhood, been feathered
after you were tarred by history, made accessory before
and after the fact. What the fuck! The fact, I mean.
What is your fact of dignity?
AND NOW, we who wear the same uniform of brotherhood,
are left to mourn for your cowardice, unfit to be draped
in the Canadian flag, or the flag of Ontario, remembered
only as a murderer, for the thickness of blood running red
as the Maple Leaf. Was it as thick as the impulse to belong,
to be a brother? Or did you, in silence, become
merely white, thick, glue?
WE SHALL cover the kettle drum with black cloth,
and make the bagpipe pianissimo, to hear the lessening last breath
of a man without a pot to piss in, who lay beneath
the boots of the leader of your three-manned platoon.
Soft, soft, very soft shall the Maple Leaf blow in the winds
that comb the park, as it is lowered to half its dignity.
Soft shall be the cries of the unemployed,
the miracle workers selling the magic of sex;
for the piled decaying maple leaves shall stoke
no funeral pyre, no memorial shall be mourned;
“walkers” in your funeral shall obey
the silence of witnesses, the silence of guilt, the silence
of ignorance, the silence of the immorality that surrounds
the park leaving abandoned plastic wrappers of used
and misused condoms, cigarette stubs, Styrofoam cups
emptied in greed and hunger; two states of mind
that have no choice nor difference of luck.
Three men, one with caution in his step,
limbs jerking with his Saint Vitus’ dancing steps;
the second one covered in a salt-and-pepper beard
that conceals his lips and changes the emotional landscape
of his face, hidden like the countenance of the women
shrouded in silk covering face and lips with slits
for eyes; the third man from India; make a trio of conspiracy,
boarding in the boarded-up house at the eastern end of the park,
painted grey, for tidiness; are now under the tree sealing
their friendship with the disappearing inch
of the forbidden cigarette. They cross the street
looking in the wrong direction, clouded by the strength
of the burning roach they throw into the pile of rotting leaves,
and when it touches the yellowing leaves there is no simmer,
no sound as from a frying pan with bacon on their two-
burner stove; when they look up in my direction, I
see only the top of their heads: balding, quivering
with the dance of Saint Vitus, the third man with a pile of grey covering
his pate like an old, stained rug the same
colour as the carpet in the home where they wipe leaves and shit,
from the frolicking dogs exercising in the park, and a single
used condom stuck to the white heel of the Adidas
of the man from India, who is accustomed
to sharing the street with cows unaccustomed to white
lines painted in the thoroughfare that divides the right-of-way
between man and beast, with his feet slapping the tar
without shoe or sandal, slapping the hot road, dodging
and bobbing-and-weaving from the brown steaming pancakes,
dropped with a sound of hollow certainty, and something like steam
rising from his lathered bare feet. Shit.
BUT THEY strolled away from me at my window two floors above
their heads, satisfied, dizzy from the shared cigarette
wrapped in brown shop paper for concealment from the uniform
in the police cruiser. The judgement was already made of these
three: bums, homeless bastards, “... before I throw
the three o’ youse in a goddamn cell.” Or, the cruiser could’ve run
them down; but there were too many witnesses, other
“homeless bas ...” Tires screeched high with speed
heading to the Division. Like a nail dragged across
a pane of glass.
THE NIGHT before, the soldiers counted the number of times
the cathedral bell signalled the time, striking clear and mournful
in the crisp night, measuring off midnight, and the quarter after
midnight; the square wooden table rocked with their weight
and their loss of balance, and six hands touched the glasses
and the cigarette butts and the spilled grains of salt, and the small
balls of chewing gum stuck to the cheap glass ashtrays,
one for each, and hard-boiled eggs in vinegar
that matched their tough appetite for beer, and three
shot-glasses empty, like three full-stops, that had held
Irish whiskey, punctuation marks to a night of celebration:
they were leaving next week, for Kandahar, so this was a night
to say farewell. They were drunk. Drunk from Molson’s
and fear and stories of desert dust. Blang!
Blang! Buh-lang! The bells were singing goodbye.
THEY COULD see yards ahead of them, the three of them could count
cars parked on both sides of Britain Street, and read
their number plates, in the spaces cleared for condominium
and loft; and they looked up and saw lights on in an office
and in a townhouse, the three happy larks singing,
“It’s a long way to Tipperary,” slapping the back
of one on his green uniform, one after one, tight
in this triumvirate of brotherhood, pals on their way
to a camouflage theatre of war, to Afghanistan and dust
and the stuffing of cigarettes grown in thick profusion
in small towns not yet bombed by America, Great
Britain, Russia, and France, the world’s great powers
who invented niggers, slaves, the prejudice of skin
and colour, and wogs, Amsterdam not excluded from this G-l0
society, buddies, sent the missionaries to discover
and convert the infidel for the last time, from a whisper
even a whisper of Allah, these new guns bring three new Bibles
hidden under their uniforms, instead of sticks of dynamite
taped to the heart, to civilize, “What the hell,
fuck up those terriss-bastards!”
THE THREE of them are camouflaged in green,
faces blackened to fool the enemy, resembling
Al Jolson pretending to be black in painted face
singing the blues of black people. But his body remains
white and his soul is buried in whiteface singing,
the dirty black blues: “Mammy,” “My Ole Kentucky Home,”
and “Georgia.” His voice is a black face of black chalk; but yours,
your face is indelible, and no eraser nor soap
can lighten the darkness of your bed. It is a short walk
from Britain Street, turn right, and come to George and Queen Street
East. They can see now, the hostel on their left hand,
for the work-less, home-less, man-less, husband-less men;
and women; and the four cannons are silent as the iron rail scrapped
from South Africa and the Boer War, before the three were born;
look left and look right, with drunken eyes that see
only in double; cross the street, and we’re home!
The Armouries ... “Our Armouries! And this homeless bugg
er
is sleeping on our property? You don’t belong here, fucker!
Go back to your home!”
STURDY IN concrete, iron fence wrought in apartheid,
black as a Maginot Line that separates men
who sleep on benches and men who sleep on canvas army cots
curtained in peaceful blackness when the lights are turned out,
it is quiet. The room in deep black imitating the colour
that Al Jolson chose to paint his face, to charm his audience,
to show love for a black voice. “Mammy, Mammy, Oh Mammy.”
He was not thinking of the woman who buried his navel string
in the desert of his birth, in the caked land, in the dry desert,
in her memory; and here now, in this country with no history
of wars fought, or won or lost, on its land, she brought you,
for your safety, she spared you from the new fashion
of wearing bombs, instead of suspenders or a leather belt,
round your waist, five dollars, strapped to your ribs and legs.
AND NOW, she must stand in the packed court, and watch
the insults in the glance, in the stare, in the mannerism,
on the lips of your two new comrades-in-arms;
camouflaged in uniforms that place you plump in the scope
of your enemy the Taliban, undistinguished from a sprouting stalk
of poppy. Do they place a red, unreal poppy at the top
of their hearts, on Remembrance Day? And pin it in a button hole,
or your beret every day that falls on the eleventh of November?
Or, is it merely a verdant reminder, in its two-faced
agricultural importance sprouting from your uniform the colour
of light-brown sand that sends you back to Africa, or the Caribbean
and the pounding of drums fading into a buzz, like water
in the ear, throbbing like the sea, like waves going and coming?
You will remember Mogadishu.
NOW, IN sadness you must face the bloody book of Law,
when your Mother’s touch is prohibited, her words of comfort
forbidden. The other defendants are flanked and two
surrounded, by mother, father, brother, sister,
sons and daughters, and the suburban up-scaled street
of condominiums identical along its lawns trimmed like the cut
of hair the army placed upon your head, like a rubber bathing cap.
You will hear your name and not know it is your name
that passed their lips, and your mother will sit in disbelief,
too deaf to hear the colour of the Law, the colour of blood
used to define you: “When the second boot landed in his chest,
the homeless man was already dead; his heart was no longer ticking;
not beating; foam like a squirt of cream settled at the corners
of his mouth, yes? The convulsions of his body were not
able to brush it off? Blood came from his mouth? Yes?”
THE JUDGE had pity on you. He looked into your mother’s face,
counted the drops of tears, jewels in her eyes,
read the plea he saw in them, her silent words that broke his heart.
A woman, in terror like your Mother, had whispered nine-one-one
into a cellular phone, like a conspiracy. “They’re killing him!”
she said, smothering her voice, as if she was the victim,
but knowing that she, married to him in danger, could be next.
“Nine-one-one? ... They’re killing him ... nine-one-one?”
She was protected by her whispers and the black of the night,
was awakened from her single bench, and she continued counting
the rhythm of the ring-leader’s shining army boot,
counting each kick, a note in the punching-bag
of his body as he could not call for help, no voice in his lungs,
already punctured by the second blow.
MAMMY-MAMMY-Mammy! Take this plea of love
and blood even from the reddened lips in a face
of black shoe polish, recite the confidence in his minstrel:
“The sun shines east, the sun shines west, I know
where the sun shines best, and I’ll walk a million miles
for one of your smiles, my Mammy.”
THEY KICKED the witness too into silence, and sent her on
her way, back to the home at Queen and Jarvis, lingering
over her to confirm a philosophy: hear, see and speak
nothing about this little misunderstanding. The sun wiped clean
the black coarse metal of the unworkable cannon, and sprinkled
the water of its rays on the glass of the Armouries now washed
in glory; and the three soldiers, not freshened by the morning sun,
passed their hands over their faces, and erased
her evidence. She was too scared to talk. They kicked
and they wiped their three palms across the blackboard
of their narrative; pulled the jackets of their uniform straight,
and walked in single file matching their report,
corroborating the facts, each word in place, just as the glass
at the entrance of the Armouries reflected the shine in their boots,
and the blood in their well-trained bodies; for they had kicked
the witness into silence, and had killed
the homeless man one kick later.
O, MAMMY, Mammy-Mammy-Mammy!
Will you walk that mile with me that sees two rivulets of water
cleanse my body at this mourning-telling sun of day
when the tears dribble down your cheeks like a harvester
in a field of poppies? Or corn? Or sugar cane?
WE HAVE killed the woman into silence; and the homeless man
who knew words and used them well, editing the torment
of others’ prose, is silenced, too.
AND YOU are left alone, fumbling with the cord knotted
round truth and stupidity and loyalty, thick as the dust
you will breathe in Kandahar, if you get there still, to carry
out the killing ordered by war, and patriotism;
witnesses are absent, and there’s no “bloody Book of Law,”
a page of calculus, perhaps, to complicate the way
you see things, and camels, and humans,
picked out in your sights.
Guernica Editions Inc. acknowledges the support
of the Canada Council for the Arts
and the Ontario Arts Council.
The Ontario Arts Council is an agency
of the Government of Ontario.
We acknowledge the financial support
of the Government of Canada through
the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities.
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 Austin Clarke and Guernica Editions Inc.
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise stored in a retrieval system, without the prior consent of the publisher is an infringement of the copyright law.
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First edition.
Printed in Canada.
Legal Deposit – Third Quarter
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2012953443
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Clarke, Austin, 1934-
Where the sun shines best / Austin Clarke.
(Essential poets series ; 200)
Poems.
Also issued in electronic format.
ISBN 978-1-55071-693-1
9781550716948 Epub
9781550716955 Mobi
I. Title. II. Series: Essential poets ; 200
PS8505.L38W54 2013 C811'.54 C2012-907650-3
This is a work of fictive poetry. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or to persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
About The Author
CULMINATING WITH the international success of The Polished Hoe in 2002, Austin Clarke has published ten novels, six short-story collections, and three memoirs in the United States, England, Canada, Australia, and Holland since 1964. Storm of Fortune, the second novel in his Toronto Trilogy about the lives of Barbadian immigrants, was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award in 1973. The Origin of Waves won the Rogers Communications Writers’ Development Trust Prize for Fiction in 1997. In 1999 his ninth novel, The Question, was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award. In 2003 he had a private audience with Queen Elisabeth in honour of his Commonwealth Prize for his tenth novel, The Polished Hoe. In 1992 Austin Clarke was honored with a Toronto Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature. In 1997, Frontier College in Toronto also granted him a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1998 he was invested with the Order of Canada, and since then he has received four honorary doctorates. In 1999 he received the Martin Luther King Junior Award for Excellence in Writing. In 2012, he won the $10,000 Harbourfront Award. Among his other achievements: Winner of the 2002 Giller Prize and co-winner of the 2003 Trillium Book Award for The Polished Hoe.