TheLAST
HOUSE
Also by Michael Kenyon
Fiction
Kleinberg (Oolichan Books)
Pinocchio’s Wife (Oberon)
Durable Tumblers (Oolichan Books)
The Biggest Animals (Thistledown Press)
The Beautiful Children (Thistledown Press)
Poetry
Rack of Lamb (Brick Books)
The Sutler (Brick Books)
The LAST
HOUSE
MICHAEL
KENYON
Brick Books
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Kenyon, Michael, 1953-
The last house / Michael Kenyon.
Poems.
ISBN 978-1-894078-74-0
I. Title.
PS8571.E67L37 2009 C811’.54 C2009-902316-4
Copyright © Michael Kenyon, 2009
We acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of our publishing program.
The cover painting is a detail from “Stream” by Lorraine Thomson. Acrylic and mixed media, 2003.
The author photograph was taken by Lorraine Thomson.
The book is set in Frutiger and Sabon.
Design and layout by Alan Siu.
Printed and bound by Sunville Printco Inc.
Brick Books
431 Boler Road, Box 20081
London, Ontario N6K 4G6
www.brickbooks.ca
For Lorraine and Ashlan
Contents
I
Broke
Splinter
Feast
Exposure
II
Trace
Light Blinds the Helm
This Is True
III
Lost Countryside
Chimney
Manchester
Cheshire
When Hawks Stop Hunting
Vernacular
Lost Countryside
Dumpster
Subdivision
Direct Totem
Broken Roof
Tenement
Mobile Home
Cellar
Tenement
Basement Suite
Hotel Garden
James Bond Above the Palace Gate
Townhouse
The Ruined Cottage
IV
Quit This Ground
Picker’s Sons
Hand
The Last House
Papa Chaos
Wren
V
Courtyard
Middle Region
Courtyard
Leap
This Perfect
Hit Brightness with Brightness
Georgia Strait
Sorcerer
The Axe of Change
Ancestors
Invention of Flight
The Stars
Utter
VI
Chorale
Géza
Acknowledgements
Biography
Who has twisted us around like this, so that
no matter what we do, we are in the posture
of someone going away?
– Rainer Maria Rilke
I
Broke
Once I built a tower, up to the sun,
brick, and rivet, and lime.
Once I built a tower, now it’s done.
Brother, can you spare a dime?
– Yip Harburg
Dad planned the old stone pile from the top
down with a fine view of rolling hills
and woods in the distance, the village
spire fixed in clouds, and provided me
every day of phlogistic childhood
with nothing but the hedge path to run
fast to school and slow home each winter
night. Weekends were blue tropical fish
by steam train for my aquarium.
Once I built a tower to the sun
that lit England the same way the bulb
lit the fish. After school kids tunnelled
under Bluebell Woods till October
submerged the cricket field in fog and
houses sprang up like mushrooms over
the hills. School and home and work and home
all mesh, as do fish, tunnel, train, each
stolen plank and nail, candle for our
cave, even flattened earth and green slime,
brick, and rivet, and lime.
Granddad did time by the fire. Fixed
clocks with glue. Corine Davis’ knickers
caught a nail, and I saw a man in
shirtsleeves dance on the windy street and
promised myself to burn like him, burn,
buddy-boy, attenuate, starve. Come,
full-blood guttersnipe, desert foal, this
day between school and home will flip and
all will pass, and all you set out from.
Once I built a tower, now it’s done.
Now sparks coruscate this half-new world,
its low roofs like bottle caps under
which we huddle, bright drunk folk, to work
small and gigantic – fieldstone, hill end,
clear-cut, pasture, dairy, army – lies,
enough to pay the bills and not mind
how much we owe the black earth and sky,
east and west. How we night-sail, sail top-
heavy, waiting for the nick of time.
Brother, can you spare a dime?
Splinter
You were inside my hand.
I kept reaching around for something.
I was inside your hand, but I kept asking questions
Of those who knew very little.
– Rumi
I was small and well away from the world
when mistletoe on the left of the path
fell from its host so the gate lay open.
The ocean between what I had left and
what I had rippled with significance
and all night I flew above the dark planed
surface till I got to the mainland coast,
blacktop, mall, the line of shops where shoppers
blindly shopped, and stepped through the broken land.
You were inside my hand,
tame as a heart I didn’t want,
and small and well away from the
world, a knot, nest, fraction, puzzle,
quite safe, I thought, from human loss
and struggle, and safe enough from
harm because poor enough to bring
neither envy nor attention.
You were sweet with time, complex as
a hooded hawk. You were one thing
I kept reaching around for, something
to hang onto, something to buy, a box
of shells or jar of jam. I was going
to make up my own world on the left of
the path behind the mall in the small woods
where the living tree had split from lightning
and split the rock it grew on. The best guns
were my best friends who all had new rifles
and shot at birds in the dead branches. Our
fort collapsed. Our school burned. We were best sons.
I was inside your hand, but I kept asking questions
of the spark inside my hand; now
both of us are hooded. Friends fade.
Business fails. Only wind stirs the
ocean between what we have and
what we have lost. Only hunger
stirs the pot. Flag ropes tap
brittle
poles, and the open-mouthed crowd turns
I flew above the dark metal
of those who knew very little.
Feast
Now come, the last that I can recognize,
pain, utter pain, fierce in the body’s texture.
As once in the mind I burned, so now I burn
in you; the wood resisted, long denied…
– Rilke
A child in winter under the sickle
moon one moment is bright with play, in love
with candy, lips and fingers Smartie red
(she likes red best), cartwheels on black branches,
oak branches written by wind and street lamp
on the hardwood floor, next moment’s surprised
by a cloud that mixes moon with sweetness,
cartwheel with voices from the kitchen, Mum
and Auntie, who discuss olives and lies.
Now come, the last that I can recognize,
old mountain beacon that holds fast sun’s light,
tell us a story, tell us a tale, bring
news of wealth, gold, the latest adventures
of heros adrift far from shore, no wind,
oarless, trying to get home by dreams of
red cows full of milk in such green pasture
focaccia, arugula, lettuce,
balsamic vinegar and oil, white plates,
rectory table, subtract from pleasure
pain, utter pain, fierce in the body’s texture.
That moon, that child, divide heaven’s promise
between them; the good food turns grey when day’s
hue is absorbed, and streets, hedges, palings,
all turn grey. Then mortal families gather,
women’s lies no stronger than lies of men,
too flushed to sit down, while the children learn
there’s slippage, a hole in the sky, the skin,
some wrong thing among us that burns and burns
the way wine, dark red, dries the throat and burns.
As once in the mind I burned, so now I burn
to heal this hurt child, light new white candles,
start the feast. She tells us she’s dizzy, can’t
stand the noise. All lies cease, laughter bows out.
When a child sickens in January, spring
breaches. A branch taps the window. She runs
in circles. With no one sober we hide
our fear and call a cab. Again the rush
of sudden fog: I’m in my first forest,
mouth zeroed. O trees, I want to confide
in you; the wood resisted, long denied…
Exposure
He posed us near our tent’s propped flap,
my parents shy against its wing, my toddler sister
tucked below, then waved us to a sudden freeze –
– Linda Bierds
Fifty-three years of struggle since
our family blew west and off
the sea to the dust of this hill.
One day my uncle took me down-
river to the big cave to shoot
morning swallows and listen hard
for frog, bird, water, cloud. Human
footprints, a large set and a small,
led beneath the cliff to a boat
painted red. He rowed out of green
currents into the foaming black
waves. We sat face to face all day,
and when we returned to the cave
he posed us near our tent’s propped flap.
The foot, first with claws, then roots. A herd
of planted feet, too many to count,
so far and small that the pattern flies
at me like my mother’s blue dress when
I was young, a flock of birds, seabirds,
sweeping the sky, the blue cave walls chock
full of feet marching to where the stone
ceiling crushes the cold red clay floor.
Before others arrive my uncle
gives me crayons, and I draw a gold
creature with vast wings and a splinter
of light between its eyes. To hold time
still he plants a tripod in the sand.
My parents shy against its wing, my toddler sister
snug between its thighs. Years later
Dad’s grin is strained and Mum’s eyes glass –
their lives tangled in the frame. Caught.
In me they see faint reflection,
Dad of his own childhood, and Mum
of what’s to come. The heat of one,
the chill of the other. Mother’s
dress against her body. Dad’s glance
at the red boat outside the cave.
My sister’s mouth wide. At my desk
I watch night wind blow smoke through trees.
The frame arbitrary, rough edge
tucked below, then waved us to a sudden freeze –
II
Trace
The Mall
In the fierce barbaric stage of our dis-
integration Trace turns slim-blonde and ends
the rich age of ram’s horn curls with gold lights
and from behind is a different woman,
no longer mine. In tight jeans her ass cheeks
crowd every quick step away while I rub
my hands together like Grandfather did
when he’d forgotten who we were, his hands
squeezing his fingers, then hiding themselves
like small feral creatures, half-asked questions,
beneath the sheets before we had a chance
to respond. I observe her waist, thickened
slightly by years, suddenly narrow and
her neck go slender, hostile. Her hair is
a snow curtain, her shoulder blades ice picks
under the T-shirt. Tough nipples stencil
a crease in the sky-blue cotton. Something
is up in her life. Every single man
stares as she shops. Every man’s gaze shocked
at how clear the lips of her cunt are through
the old denim, the fabric so threadbare
both thighs hint at pale skin, the edges of
what I’m allowed to recall, that my great-
great-great-great-grandfather, cockstunned, strained to
see his niece’s arse as she bent over
the second floor railing. Knickers made him
lose where and who he was, negotiate
where and who he might be, sharp ferocious
nib part way down the page, all the way down,
loosing an avalanche, till I stand gob-
smacked at Tracy’s feet watching a stream surge
along a tiled trough. When she stops to check
herself at the window of a sporting
goods store, boys gather round the reflection
with a magnifying glass to study
the path light takes through cloth and how it treats
the weave and skin, each bump a planet, each
strand a rupture in time, each blue sheath, brown
indent. Before shopping, such cathedrals
inspired Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfather,
hurt boy and murderer with most crimes un-
seen, to drop many in the village pond
to be nibbled by snakes and frogs whose stirred
world transformed to welcome each stage of life,
species, generation. Meanwhile, she’s smug.
She knows she looks good. Grins at her image
in the window, soft lips parted for when
she’ll drop to her knees, invite the boys to
rivers that overflow old boundary stones
she’s swallowed and swallowed, till they are in
ruins. We all want surprise. A quick chi
ll.
A giggle. But not tears, not this crying.
I’m wet as a fish clothed in air, strangely
well and unafraid. Her safety is up
to mall security cops who step in,
three furies, Defeat, Revenge, Victory.
I know this official version and know
the sequence by heart and wash my hands of
the slow drama, my greyest ancestor,
the guards who lead her to the nearest wall.
She says to stop and wind sighs through the mall.
First guard arrests the boys. Second guard leans
into her. The third uncaps his ballpoint.
And again the years fill with sperm and spleen.
The first stage our eyes. The second our ears.
Third our heart. How easy she is to peel!
I push through the crowd and the guards and get
ready to tell the truth for once and hold
forth loud, for now she’s a girl I once loved,
too young to know what’s real, just like me, both
of us too young to squeeze meaning out of
our years, much less out of parents long dead.
Ghosts collapse like plastic bags while uncles
in uniform take the glossy floor and
shoppers’ voices almost drown the slap of
oars, the flop of landed trout. Death’s close. Lungs
fill with earth, my own breath close to drowning.
Glass
Outside the neighbour’s greenhouse brews a storm
lopsided with rain. I tell him about
Tracy and watch him pick a cucumber
and toss it in a swampy raised bed where
there’s thrashing and a plosive gasp, supple
slide of a long thick black body; he laughs.
“The eel is hungry.” Then silence, complete.
Humid. Intimate. We’re not who we were.