The Project Gutenberg eBook of Eyeshine

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Title: Eyeshine

Author: Paul Cameron Brown

Release date: November 19, 2009 [eBook #30504]

Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Sorour Imani

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EYESHINE ***

EYESHINE

By

Paul Cameron Brown

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Canadian Author and Bookman, Grain, Androgyne (USA), Maker, Quarry, Or,

Otherthan Review, Jewish Dialog, Tightrope, Alpha,

Nebula, Horizon, Boreal, Stuffed Crocodile, Northern Journey,

Origins, Mamashee, Wee Giant, Unchained Heart (USA),

Poetic License.

Published with the assistance of Ontario Arts Council

CONTENTS.

7 Stillness

8 Hewanorra

9 The Intruder

10 Dinner at Eight

12 The Bay of Cortes

13 Oracabessa

14 Prospectus

15 Gladiators

16 Ocean Sea

19 Cold Passion

21 For Tom Thomson

23 The Woodsman

24 East of Oswego

25 Presence of Mind

27 Fishing Nets

28 Rites of Intensification

29 Jagged Wire

30 Eyeshine

32 Sweet Water

33 Primavera

34 The Encounter

35 Magpie Tongues

36 Plums and Vine

37 Perhaps

38 Approaching Thirty (Lauds and Matins)

39 Passageways

42 Kindling

43 The Glowworm

44 Between Two Stones

45 The Waters of the Bay Lie Beneath

47 Passing

48 Kith and Kin

50 To Sit Arrayed

51 Silver Coins

52 Sentry

53 The Potato Eaters

54 The Assignation (Pons Asinorum)

55 Haunted Child

56 Triangular Trade

57 Casting Rocks

58 Brushstroke

59 Man

60 Landing Schemes

61 Mirage

62 Stone Guide

63 Red Illusions Under Glass

STILLNESS

Invitingly, the sea shines her stars,

captive flames within an impatient heart

as darkness loads the pleasent isles with coarseness,

slow sparks rise over a roaring fire.

And strolling beaches near dawn

when the sand fleas & crabs are seen to flee,

one catches upon the imperfect stillness

a song of one - wind with sea

drawning near

inward, such stars turn

as bonds at last

worked free.

[7]

HEWANORRA

The moon, at most a shudder or two away.

The sky, bivouaked and cloudy, is within twin sloops of a bay.

The lagoon opens, spars with the greater ocean

by island hopping, green azure blue, as

the wind steps before an open sea.

The great ridge of the mountain

lies obscured by rain;

jasmine, frequent colour

and plantations

with cocoa, soursop, and cinnamon.

Arawaks, Pelee,

Carriacoi, Anegada,

Josephine of the Creoles,

let Admiral Rodney atone Lord Byng.

And my Patois beauty,

breath laced Oleander sweet -

take the hemming from your dress

then come sit down with me.

[8]

THE INTRUDER

The colouring of spacious flowers rove delicious to the eye.

The road above the harbour fickle, carousing in its tendency

to pull too gray by sky enamelled water.

The tropical foliage, still and languorous, to my touch.

Each particle of sunlight dangling as if hoisted from

a perfumed ledge.

Newly mown grass in streaks, browns serpent-like across

the path.

Low erogenous puffs of dust are swathed by passing feet.

Near by, bushes wear the foliage of streaked mud as a mantle

might cottonwool at Christmas.

Life in such climes is built on connotations rather than pure

innuendoes of purpose.

The southern sky, the heat above the sea allude to this.

This triumphant trilogy embossed upon volcanic slate, more

crumpled paper than firm land.

Gravesides lying in twilight nakedness.

The scion moon in her damaged vestry between acolyte

clouds.

Hamlets resembling clotted blood, nicks across an earmarked

horizon.

The poor, wavering to transfixed in their hotly owned sun;

the one commodity they rightly possess.

The outpouring sea, loosing herself in bridged inlets,

countless points that nudge the land in acknowledged

supremacy.

The irrelevance of time, inbreeding of pale intruder.

[9]

DINNER AT EIGHT

At times, I thought of swizzling white rum

in the tropics (not as a vocation),

dropping into the club

for a round of tennis

before dinner at eight

or a quiet set of darts

before retiring.

I had grown accustomed to my new routine

(at least vicariously).

In the best Somerset Maugham tradition

I would dress for dinner,

decline to be patronizing,

avoid the potential slur

if crisp linen did not appear

regularly on my bed or table.

I still found time to stop

for breakfast coffee,

take a moment from regimen

to fondle fresh, wet flowers,

look over the balcony at the

blueness of the bay.

The metaphysical qualities that come

into play erode such morning somnambulations.

The heat depreciated any vainglorious

attempts to lionize the native Caribbean rum.

Tennis and darts become ho-hum,

more of a task than a pleasant diversion.

The little yellowed board seemed

to symbolize not convivial cordiality

but crabbed provincialism.

The tie & collar were intolerable

against the saline tropic night and

seemed rigid in a place and time

the locals could not possibly share.

In short, such things celebrated my apartness.

Linen rarely, if ever, appeared

and to resort to complaints

resulted in only furthering

the distance between one and his hosts.

Even the coffee tasted bitter and seemed

unsuited to the needs of an interloper.

Neither was fruit juice the promised manna.

And one can take only so much nostalgic flower warbling.

The hummingbirds and oleander came to grow

as commonplace and exhausting as the rain.

I began ruminating thoughts back to my previous existence.

Surprised at my illogical shift in allegiances,

I began stealing thoughts more and more surreptitiously

about the naturalness of working a full day,

donning the apparel of a civilized man,

dropping the white man's burden.

Disgust filled me with my former Rousseauian yearnings.

With trepidation, one's dreams

can erect barriers more effective

than the most ill-sponsored illusions.

[10]

THE BAY OF CORTES

The sea is a requisitioned article in my possession.

Above, in fat circles of conformity, glide

turkey vultures, their combs

a rich obscenely red.

The guano rocks are isles and stepping stones

of bird waste.

They lie thick and bedeviled with fish fur,

a dull lavender cached hard to the sun

seems to shine a metallic harvest white

as desert rocklets scattered to the breeze.

A speck of a fisherman dots the horizon.

His craft a barque in loneliness across the sea.

Dolphins inveigh the richness of the depths,

persuade latitudes to drift about their wake.

Pelicans sour the parabola distances between light and sound,

become chancy over this distant breath of song.

Above the cliffs and the inner roads that follow

the desert into geometric squares, stand abodes.

The thin supremacy of shadows at dusk disparage the

traveller here.

Burros strayed lie dead by the highway's edge.

The liquid depth of the mountains reinforces vulnerability.

The night air is alive with the torment of insects, asplash

with sound.

Lights carry an eerie message dotted about the hills.

Feeling alone is a delicacy to be savoured by the standards

of the tropic sun.

[12]

ORACABESSA

An iron wrought gate of turpentine force conveys little pigment,

almost black parchment letters mindful of

hands, arched and stroked from the very stone, until an

elephantine water runs nettle sand to their granite perch.

The broiling heat in this part of the Indies one knows must,

posthaste, carry to the humus and flies any modicum of

human remains.

And, over distant dispatch of time, the elongated sprawl of

waves dashing up straight to the shallow's grave, makes

memory drawn, any record of the little parish's dead flimsy

in the topsy context of soil and undulant peat.

A greened isle stares past the feckless scene, past again an

aged church noticeboard that scrapes out traces of news

worthy of import to the wormy road.

Whitewash, the colour of the shackled crypts, casts upon

the church a pallor of distraught gray.

A goat is seen foraging between such marker stones.

The day seems to cut into the marble white detachment

of the sarcophagi with abrupt candor.

Yet, while the cove pokes like a walking stick, the sun &

earth conspire to reclaim this space as their rightful bread.

A huge vegetative urge to growth is witness to abundant

further life - life in whorls of bamboo shoot, naseberry

thatches & canebreak all garnished a short stride across the barrier gate.

[13]

PROSPECTUS

In salt flats,

idle pools

bunching off the ocean,

multi-legged crabs, worsted stalks -

sea crimson weed

weigh the panoply

to heighten my deepening fervour.

In the bedrock shanks

of spread tidal basins

clothed in spools of enveloping

brackish water,

a plethora teeming with aqua towns

and untold gadgetry exists -

replete with mimicry

including primeval

flotilla tanks

and broadsheets for spreading

their way of life.

[14]

GLADIATORS

No broken visor, emptied glove

abandoned cudgel, opened net

- only gathering spots on spreading sand.

Clang of cymbals

wrench of flesh,

death is a morsel

delectably met.

[15]

OCEAN SEA

All that is eternal is circular.

- Aristotle

Cueta and Tetuan are outposts within the Arab psyche,

frail islets jutting their Islamic consciousness

into the infidel mind.

A mere eight miles separates the tip of North Africa

from Iberia's reclining form.

An Arab dhow sits off the port of Tangier

where the unsuspecting can lose more than priapic curiosity.

Arabia, from Ormuz to Sofala,

an empire of sabulous plenitude -

shiekdoms, oil rich fiefs, and

luxurious enervation.

Da Gama rounds the Bight of Africa, needles the Saracen eye.

Tutankhamen rests dolefully within the dunes

away from bone merchants until 1923 draws nigh.

Ptolemy errs and extends Africa to the Poles.

The noblest failure in antiquity rests in Zama

while Jesus toiled for our betterment at Galilee.

Richard dies besieging Acre.

Carnage occurred at Lepanto with attendant demise of the Turk.

Marco Polo ignores the Levant for the riches of a Khan.

The memory of El Alamein burnt away any vestige of Tobruk.

The Casbah is my twain that confirms East & West shall never meet.

The False Prophet is in abundance, notwithstanding

Western civilization's fierce resistance to his ideas.

Minarets, prayer rugs face Mecca five times daily while

opium on a mother's breast induces premature death in

unwanted infant girls.

The purdah is an eerie monologue between the feminine

form and purloined courage.

Mysticism juxtaposes carnal delight in the halls of the

Saladein's concubines.

Harems & the seraglios are the coveted date wine.

In Cape Bojador, there lurks a primeval instinct,

a nagging supposition all is not right with Araby.

The bath, the cloying sweetness of duplicity,

stirs amidst trenchant eyes.

Marmelukes are more than adventure book fiction

in the silent quarters.

The swirling dust, the prohibition of alcoholic drink,

are dervishes in the hadji's brain.

Everywhere, the ragged people cluster,

almsgiving becomes a prayer in the saline night.

Any but the Moslem faith caught in the pilgrimmage

to Mecca meet swift death.

The shopfronts with their bronzed clatter,

decantered gold, near haggling that becomes

the economics of plea bargaining, wits

desire against pressing need.

Debarking from Algeciras, facing the sublime North African

desert as her colours coil, pitch forward amongst the hills,

squares this continent's personality against the Occident.

Europe found other continents soft butter to her trenchant blade.

Here, she must consider herself matched with the heady dictates of survival.

[16]

COLD PASSION

Some dead undid undid their bushy jaws,

and bags of blood let out their flies...

Dylan Thomas

The land is barren

wears straw wisps

as an unkempt man

might razor stubble.

The land is dry, a faded yellow

in its barrenness.

A sky broods from afar,

a stalactite sun accounts merely a jot

above that thin road into despair.

Grass lies everywhere dead,

faded tongues above an

earth afflicted with scleroderma,

deadliest of skin disturbances,

forerunner of deeper pestilence.

An erasing wind whips the fields

further into bereavement;

turns tiny bits of chaff to pursue themselves

in a mad St. Vitus dance

of cold passion.

Starry night. With halos

about the moon, pale and languid, big as crimson,

far as wind driven flax.

The orange pallor, pale

with liquid swoon and ability

to churn itself about the

night sky or flood in endless

beams our poorer spectacle below.

[19]

FOR TOM THOMSON

I have thrust my fists

up to ice in the

galactic mire of lake,

lured my minnow wriggler

eyes as bait to ensnare

inroads, lake bed wreaths,

across the windchill spine of

brooding heart.

I am on the essence of the North

where latitudes of cold spontaneity

remind me the nameless lakes

part not easily with their secrets.

A man's bones go easily to rot

in the frigid perspiration

called primeval ooze,

precambrian sweat,

the tertiary stage syphilitic crawl

of advancing ice.

All those terms your detractors, analyzers,

devotees coin to define you: the Boreal,

taiga, subarctic steppes, white hell,

recoil under the onslaught, the lustrate message straining

up alkaline clear.

Water is your blood.

A vast hoarding, most of this

planet's fresh drink

is flushed through your

bowels, with kidneys

separating the renic

qualities as snow and

sleet, the night side of

your character.

Tom, son of Thomson fame,

his little canoe immeshed

as scrubbed floorboards now,

a giant winnowing such scattered

firewood over a slow crop of

putrefying muck; perhaps

I see your eyes

as sturdy bubbles

popping from legions

of green liquid

to carouse with your

firm memory.

[21]

THE WOODSMAN

Barely annoying the woods,

his cabin like our woodpile

home now for chipmunks and birds,

isolated by the lily pads -

he eschewed all comfort.

The view barely cognizant,

the prospect of the Massasauga rattler

and an occasional broken tin

sharp at the edges

was like water's drift

audible, not yet seen.

Toying with the cove,

past island jetties

& blueberry groves

inside little giant's tomb;

this man became ingratiated with lake treasure,

his clearing a triumphant blast.

He affixed his mark -

blazoning human habitation

on a lonely spot.

[23]

EAST OF OSWEGOE

Ticonderoga to Lake George,

the classic invasion route

up the Richelieu valley

past Plattsburg,

Verdun,

à Montréal

across the North Shore

reroute again

to savour Albany;

last of the trading posts east of Oswego

before New York

protective sanctuary

lodgings,

free from the scalping knife

barrens and

the horrors Fenimore Cooper described.

Apple crisp, fall damp the air

with an unbroken stretch of forest

and Adirondack mountains,

there, delicate slip

of fair womanhood

bliss, she lies, gentle as the finger lakes

clothed in autumn crimson.

[24]

PRESENCE OF MIND

Spring heralds the summer with lilacs perched from that door.

In snows, a swarm of bushes lie black and apparently

rootless as the town's iron-gate bridge collapses under the

centre part of the main road.

Little enclaves of activity pass as stores,

mere centrefolds across busy highway arteries this time

of year.

I am a grey fleck in my dark wool coat near the perimeter

of a winding fence.

The casual observer gives me half a chance to be seen in

the deathless white, opaque coloured moonstone so still

against the field's shores.

A plaster river, her sides inserted with isle-dotted chunks,

hands across a winter solstice tribal dance.

Ostensibly, I poke the land from stylized limbo,

a chalky substance disturbed with every movement's cough.

And if I were to fall, lie down, and cry,

the agonized winter's frantic sun

would bury me with shadows,

give forth dark branches to my freedom.

In the growing dark, I ponder white and infinity.

The hectic pace of the distant highway absorbs

less and less my hope.

In private cold, my face burns a tallow white,

toes flake in frostbite or erode every sensation.

Stars in the dark canopy above are cryptic mourners and

people frigid sorrow.

Black is my colour as I ebb steadily toward their heights.

By morning, when the first wisp of straw or dry leaf

catches light near this stringent fence, an occasional

passerby with the presence of mind shall comment how

lifeless fields are in the clutch of brittle snow.

[25]

FISHING NETS

The polar stars drip in blood . . .

Orion's mythical crystal white

with clarity of forest and

low expanse of sky;

wooden barques, incandescent,

row peals of silver light

sowing each slough of wave,

spider hues drip upon wetness

forlorn with tug and rein.

[27]

RITES OF INTENSIFICATION

Did time on the Hegelian

spirit, Freudian id,

the totemic response to

the unknowable

where each phenomenon of nature

became dream time itself,

the electric crackle

of God's Voice-

movement from shadowy spectre to

tight-lipped showmanship

the learned empathy

of tires careening around

their throttled load.

[28]

JAGGED WIRE

A rail fence is more than that on a country dawn

moving by lots over hill & stone;

it barely pauses in the small of the field's lap,

then is caught in grey positioning as

light unfurls the sky.

All is a matter of perfect blistering -

dauber wasps are seen to heave the moistened wood

in chunks to mossy furrows, benign

in their firm embrace upon alabaster trees.

There, crusts of heavy nails, marked

like fortresses, droop in their rusty mail.

Mostly ants, in open canter, move

in as upon an urn & lance far more

than jagged wire the breath of stillest air.

[29]

EYESHINE

I remember the world like a picture.

The habitat of trees and sense impressions,

the cover of leaves as fall spurred its way

thru corridors of plasma forest & sarsen stone.

Most of all, I saw illuminated clearly

the brash self poke of logic that came

massively when sunlight stirred, lilted

its early head erasing the world thru

sand crusts of colour.

The cabin floor, a cold dawn infinity,

was a chilblain on frosty morning shadows -

the old cupboards staring like flowers

through a break in the leaves

watched till the latches & hinges were worlds

in frozen power, dark rust as thoughts

meandering like age.

The stamped down clay, the well worn earthen crust

that met the door on opening showed

the erring calender all its interminable

days that waited, like madmen, to remind one of oceanic

time.

And, on wakening, the careless passage

of life across speckled windows saw a terrain of light -

tiny works in agility, the forest

looming bright as meridians

off ladders bristling with homuncular forms.

Door of caring, the gentle trail

left as a universe to announce

the brittle thrust and restive eves

of daytime shadow.

[30]

SWEET WATER

The leaves lie hidden as spades about their home.

Brief movement of a kitten, then silence

till the car's engine drones.

Close by, a pioneer cemetery sits near a secondary wood.

Queer is the effect of sun on a tinted roof;

bluebells with poppies,

cowslip and tiny brook

back of

fields redden and

given to wheat.

A house is a machine

processing the water of living

a replenished cistern,

birds paying a call, a minor animal

brushing past

an ivy-railed fence.

[32]

PRIMAVERA

A poem is perishable and,

like it,

so much of life is spent

in intervals -

the jarring second

regaining consciousness,

a post-mortem flick

of the lank equestrian eyelid

that signals morning's first crepuscular move.

... a little salad consciousness

about the tumescent room

with the sentient purr of a cat;

her musky oils

a green verdure

lapping primordial scent

to engross a little readiness

as the day progresses

to its Oedipal stage

and arrested development.

[33]

THE ENCOUNTER

Today surprised me

like a red fox blurting

out of an October thicket -

empty, dry, the burst of its

energy camouflaged much as

that fox, solemn and cold,

biding his time

till he thought I

passed.

[34]

MAGPIE TONGUES

Trillium breath, an ounce

of feathered growth unravels

in the cloves of the silent forest.

The rain is heavy with the stamp

of perfumed trees realizing

slight restraint on bursting seed.

Cloaked in fragrance, tufts

of mossy step kiss the opening earth,

a basement horizon presumes

the darling test of flower

across dale & rustling nook,

then undresses moist greenery

with sumptuous eye.

The last is hardest -

cat crimson, a fire weed sunset lotion,

the rain erased away;

nobody special harangues the leaves

but birds steal in quietly with

tenderness clothed of verdure

to pinch a leafy oasis about

their forest haunt.

[35]

PLUMS & VINE

Plums and vine (as the Atlantic is green)

intone the heavy church wall

with errant sprigs, so Heaven sent

they are big with earthly passion

racing for the sky.

Madonna Poverta in her midst

with the pulpit clutching Light -

so gnarled, like bush, that each crevice

reeks with stone

all stooped under such worldly avarice.

[36]

PERHAPS

Perhaps the sky once was shadows,

the moon lisped 'mongst April's song.

Now, those warm lips ease

departing sorrow

like pressed flowers

emptied from hallowed ground.

[37]

APPROACHING THIRTY (Lauds and Matins)

Laconic tears or Botticelli's Venus

holding the years

like tresses

in a wistful pose.

Tenebrous youth accosted

by callow Time

bleeds the heart

with spring aloes.

No comfortable shibboleths

to restrain the wriggling polyps

in the skin or nestling hair.

Gerundive in movement,

each particled whimper

of the clock surrounds

a cloistered second

poised about the bearded target.

As far as you know, nothing unusual.

A total of eight hundred months

but grammar school sums,

spiel & mileage

to drift across a lifetime.

At thirty, the best half of the potage

is gruel hand drawn from

the sabulous pot.

[38]

PASSAGEWAYS

Greet the days -

greet the moon,

gather the stars...

Man is not at one with himself -

collars the infidel ways of his

race under pressure domes of widening silence.

I scan the horizon barely cognizant

of the metallic bits that pierce

the night's crown - no

jewelled orb stabs this queen's spectre.

I am running and lost. . . ever slow

to breech this reasoning.

Honeysuckle mist with armfuls

of orange lilies with scent stronger

than the carriage needed in their gathering.

Place the constellations upon their heads,

the colour so transcends.

And then there are the bludgeoned

stars fallen into the eyes of

my farmhouse scene.

The sphinx moth that darns the night

with her acrobatics escapes the wreath

of troubled moon that places about

her proboscised head.

Let her stone the night in peace,

feel palpitations on her ocean breast.

The darting of stone cracks in fissures

along the causeway to the stonehouse

is certain and sure.

A definite mood projects

the starling tunnels,

forlorn now with limpid darkness,

crushed lavender from the pews

of thoughtful night.

There are armfuls of crushed bats

in the passageway to my heart,

each reeking with squeals

to alarm the most frightened princess.

Only one has stained the pass key

and I must find her.

A toad abides the thoughtful recess

broken under the wall.

He is a good toad and mourns

the night creaking from the river bed.

A monster dragon to the insects

making a living near the light -

a source of amused contempt to lepidoptrists

squeezing the eye's circle,

pressing her to release her giddy charms.

At morning, skeletal remains

shall stain the blighted chain (mood collector, toad, moth)

but, for now, only the night buzzes with alarm,

cracking her secrets with each tiny monster

hurled at light's intrusion into dark.

Perchance I shall narrow

down the divide, position alarms,

remind myself I am inured to the

mood & scent that mans this cosmic bandwagon.

I hold up flowers to remind me

light escapes through jelly

and that rare LUMINESCENCE exists only

in lost bat chambers

buried deep near the recesses

of the snake.

The cry of havoc,

all those armfuls of collapsed lilies

breaking under the toil of enforced handshakes

leaves me like a broken lamp.

I have no more shades to patch

the plinths or barricade my heart.

I have left my love on bended knee

in a land I choose to forget.

[39]

KINDLING

As a matter of fact,

ovens do carry a glazed stare,

fireplaces are wont to parry

thoughts to kindling

before their stoop and

on breathless summer nights

one is hard pressed

to recall cinder and

blackened barleys any more

vegetatively than upon

these harridan pots.

[42]

THE GLOWWORM

In slow sutures of pale white -

dabbed in growing spume & mud dried earth,

a glowworm is obliterated by warm, soft light

coming up to elbow particles of near dappled clay

that plants dissect, warm as feasts, aloft a muscat lawn.

Pale, segmented tortoise -

trite in area and jellied purpose,

the glowworm oozes headlong

through an aroused dark

necking furiously with fungus turds

and truffles rooted from the

pig ground by mice sized swine

holidaying on scents and mildew salvaged

thru pores & nestling bowels

of their planet sized turf.

[43]

BETWEEN TWO STONES

They poured hot water into people's cups

in which green tea leaves were floating

like algae,

or into red-painted spittoons

placed on the floor

which the travellers made frequent use of...

It was strangely quiet.

[44]

THE WATERS OF THE BAY LIE BENEATH

An abandoned house -

dark salved to eclectic;

crinkly, black pigment of old pine boards

disparate to the elements.

The waters of the bay lie beneath.

A long slope trailing back of brush,

garbles stones hoarse

in the throat of a dust-flecked field

are made more barren

by the skunk cabbage weeds,

the ugly, flotsam cloaks

of horse hair to the neck -

a hair shirt, coddling abrupt the barren pain

tilled from empty soil.

The summer's heat.

Nameless insect waifs

wavering, adjusting tumult

to straighten the tight air

about the outward door frame.

Pinched in windows, glass in

refugee lots billowing about

urine paper;

nails a ruddy pick

dried to rusty blue,

some dim shiny in their cropped disrepair.

A road dry, rotating bare,

nameless zigzagged

only limestone in shelves

meanders in

throngs about stony debris,

sometimes up to this beaten house.

[45]

PASSING

I should be busy with words

but light distracts me

makes for me, in the sowing of its waves,

neutral observances, a chilled awareness

that the sublime is contained herein

the wonders of the commonplace.

[47]

KITH AND KIN

Once there was a giant

who lived in a kneecap,

a peculiar giant at that

who expelled all reality

as a pig might a poke.

Not concerned with the dilemma

of easing life's toothpaste form

into dental crustings or

oblivion's dark shadows

from lightless paths,

the giant assumed guardianship

over his fibro-tissual home.

The giant could be seen

ferrying dwarfed bones

over the inter causal dome

of flesh and blood.

At times, he substituted

a remarkable likeness

for his kith and kin

by dumping calloused cushions,

too long cousins

of the diaper rash effect

bunions, corns,

carbuncles

eager to roam

the padlocked sockets

between distant fibula

and tibia.

Poor femur, of course, was

outraged against carpals

and the growing phalanx

arrangement of

distant phalanges.

Even the metatarsals

were girdled in

righteous indignation

committed against their person

by a maverick masquerading

in pelvic insubordination.

Altogether the body contains 206 bones.

It is rumoured none contain

a giant of his capacity, notoriety, or effect.

[48]

TO SIT ARRAYED

To sit arrayed

and task consumed

by the edge of a window,

the world as fire

stepping free of winter's stain,

jutting fingers of light

to a basement ledge

then allowing their

foggy movement to

displace dust's circle

as it has come

to be known

over the last

five months,

is to come as

near as possible

to the brink

of private

sanity.

[50]

SILVER COINS

Seen the whores in doorsteps,

slack, crouched as packing crates

behind their quiet wardrobe lamps,

inset like a skeleton's crown

there to bend our will,

provide passageways to power and suggestion;

the winding entrance to rouged

light flickering with powdered flesh

yellow of gold,

then black to ivory

a frightful circus in a palace of turn

within the grate of execution.

[51]

SENTRY

In Edvard Munch's painting, The Scream, eyes

are grouped as discs, almost rotund arches,

much as suns breaking over an eclipsed wall.

Hollows, jittery the bridge a creamed escape

careening the soul madly backward

a pastel gathering sky -

water rivulets where two solitary, graven figures

seem indulging a flaccid, breaking stream.

[52]

THE POTATO EATERS

The potato eaters -

grim, weathered souls

wrenching a meal

from sandy waste.

The dark toil lined ridges

carried from their fields

to each human face,

dim, pale light

as shadowy as

lives eked out upon this stoney rash of soil.

Brows, a murky legend

of overwork -

deflected hope,

seasons up in the smoke

of a potato boil.

[53]

THE ASSIGNATION (PONS ASINORUM)

Many devils are in woods, in waters, in wilderness and in dark,

pooly places ready to hurt. . . people, some are also in thick,

black clouds.  Martin Luther

. . .Masaccio to the Florentine Renaissance but a naught-

every man the same, St. Francis the same as a Jack the Ripper.

their rosy surfaces filled.

Like an Old Testament curse

he is loosed upon the earth.

Ecking out his pound of flesh

delivering misery in sordidness, he parboils the land.

A modern day Tantalus up to his throat

in burning lies,

his death is to live, in the contemporary sense,

the thousand cuts-

to bury the skies as a dread Caiaphas

into the contradiction, the snares of his being.

Measure for measure

his blond mane, pale scarf

are hallmarks of the doomed Dutchman searching out the

Coromandel;

like Cain stumbling upon existence,

he hearkens back to the original Murderer,

has sold his inheritance for a pittance

and by doing so has ridiculed the human condition

with his life charged obscenity;

his blond beast scowl curdled about respectability's neck,

his fang tussled face a menacing white cigarette,

the soul imprisoned jailer to his teeth, breath and brain.

[54]

HAUNTED CHILD

In the dark of wedlock

nightly sky,

the wither of hope

and estranged replies,

cause a white face to flicker

with transparent eye,

calumny of purpose

to slowly die.

[55]

TRIANGULAR TRADE

I would watch him lifting

another drink from the fridge,

joke about the connection

with a triangular trade -

bedroom to kitchen fridge,

then to the bathroom -

only to repeat the cycle

not knowing such comments

scratched his eyes

climbing through the window

for escape.

[56]

CASTING ROCKS

Merely on edge,

the wharf in bad light

clinging to water's ledge -

a loon from afar

the Woods

closing with each sound.

Casting rocks toward moon's glare

lapidations laughing back,

the treacle of warm night

coaxing fire's glowing might.

Sudden, oceanic wilderness

breathless in barked silence -

and camphor to keep the flies at distance,

the anchored boat like a prison ship

dallying on the waves,

brambles & underbrush

sunken wet sand,

abundant berries rasp in thickets -

the cottage like a jar

closing for the night.

[57]

BRUSHSTROKE

On rue Vincingetorix,

a Paris hovel

in a garret of cold -

Gauguin enchanted

serpentine colours, the medium of

a brushstroke from

a paltry primitivism.

Rue Vincingetorix,

cloudy haze

sun as billowing plaster,

neatly laps

scrapes clean

the bereavement

of a man's pain.

[58]

MAN

In the old air

by his rocker,

a silent trapeze of thought

suspends an aging man.

Each movement as of the katydid

droning -

a monologue with the past;

a buzz escaping across

still, warm air.

Elsewhere, cicadas whittle about the octogenarian heat.

Nestled quietly, a supine stare erodes both time & place

unto bearded grey -

nuances clasped

in a breathless chat with death.

[59]

LANDING SCHEMES

Omens are the cloth of dreams

scissors used to open sky -

the future riding birds

en route to ariel docking piles.

Leonardo was of the opinion creativity might be

enhanced a notch should aspiring artists nota bene

principalities, bile, their rhumes as tiles

then perceive them piecemeal as stratagem, not snuff or

random blotch, the heads of diseased pigs

but conjuror-sextants toward the stars.

[60]

MIRAGE

The intense focus of light

but pointillism,

into this juncture bits of light

surround rough, inverted sky -

dawn is their message

unfurled about

the alumni apparatus

of incensed eyes

and whispered sun.

The heavy mirage of dots,

landscape locked

Seurat, a frieze of summer heat

choking water lilies -

the sun as a crystal ship

adrift across

bedlam-sponsored

random dots.

[61]

STONE GUIDE

She was fading -

into the stone

into rifled shadows heavy

with fallen light,

rippled boughs

of splitting fruit &

droopy leaves

to a sallow body under clumsy years

that ripped the tunic of her coat

while bleating the dismal age

with each petal fall

of a stockinged foot.

[62]

RED ILLUSIONS UNDER GLASS

Life as green illusion -

the cool fronds of the fern

are deep set in firmest soil

and the grassy narrows

brook a silent, liquid play.

Red illusions under glass -

quietly picking strawberries

where a woman hums to

the buzz of flies

with the afternoon sun disappearing overhead.

Each grasp of the berry

a red stain, the darting of seeds,

crimson tendrils do confuse the eye

with a polka dot starling raucous

in glee above.

[63]

Copyright © 1978 by Paul Cameron Brown

All rights reserved

ISBN: 0-88823-014-1

Published by

Three Trees Press

P.O. Box 70, Postal Station "V"

Toronto, Ont. M6R 3A4, Canada

Printed and bound in Canada.

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Table of Contents

EYESHINE By Paul Cameron Brown

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

CONTENTS.

STILLNESS

HEWANORRA

THE INTRUDER

DINNER AT EIGHT

THE BAY OF CORTES

ORACABESSA

PROSPECTUS

GLADIATORS

OCEAN SEA

COLD PASSION

FOR TOM THOMSON

THE WOODSMAN

EAST OF OSWEGOE

PRESENCE OF MIND

FISHING NETS

RITES OF INTENSIFICATION

JAGGED WIRE

EYESHINE

SWEET WATER

PRIMAVERA

THE ENCOUNTER

MAGPIE TONGUES

PLUMS & VINE

PERHAPS

APPROACHING THIRTY (Lauds and Matins)

PASSAGEWAYS

KINDLING

THE GLOWWORM

BETWEEN TWO STONES

THE WATERS OF THE BAY LIE BENEATH

PASSING

KITH AND KIN

TO SIT ARRAYED

SILVER COINS

SENTRY

THE POTATO EATERS

THE ASSIGNATION (PONS ASINORUM)

HAUNTED CHILD

TRIANGULAR TRADE

CASTING ROCKS

BRUSHSTROKE

MAN

LANDING SCHEMES

MIRAGE

STONE GUIDE

RED ILLUSIONS UNDER GLASS

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE