Well, it's the end of term and the beginning of spring. It's actually the end and the beginning of many things. So I felt like blogging a little more casual than usual. I spent last night painstakingly typing out this poem. I really hope someone takes the time to read it...Please feel free to let me know if you did!
I've always liked this poem. And for many reasons it seems to be particularly appropriate in this moment of time.
The land has a very loud voice in Canadian literature. It's almost as if Purdy's poems are written from the land's point of view. I know the land Purdy is writing about in this poem very well; many parts of it have flooded this week. A friend of mine who grew up in a similar part of Ontario has chosen to return to a life of farming. He recommend I read Fields of Plenty by Michael Ableman, and I did. I recommend it to you too...we have it in our library system (call # S 605.5 .A249 2005).
I've noticed that many of our Masters students are studying agriculture and agricultural land. In a climate of environmental desperation, health crises and food prices causing riots around the world, it is reassuring to know a new generation sees the need for local and sustainable food sources and community building.
Enjoy.
The Country North of Belleville
by Al Purdy
Bush land scrub land -
Cashel Township and Wollaston
Elzevir McClure and Dungannon
green lands of Weslemkoon Lake
where a man might have some
opinion of what beauty
is and none deny him
for miles ---
Yet this is the country of defeat
where Sisyphus rolls a big stone
year after year up the ancient hills
picknicking glaciers have left strewn
with centuries' rubble
backbreaking days
in the sun and rain
when realization seeps slow in the mind
without grandeur or self deception in
noble struggle
of being a fool --
A country of quiescence and still distance
a lean land
not like the fat south
with inches of black soil on
earth's round belly --
And where the farms are
it's as if a man stuck
both thumbs in the in the stony earth and pulled
it apart
to make room
enough between the trees
for a wife
and maybe some cows and
room for some
of the more easily kept illusions --
And where the farms have gone back
to forest
are only soft outlines
shadowy differences --
Old fences drift vaguely among the trees
a pile of moss-covered stones
gathered for some ghost purpose
has lost meaning under the meaningless sky
--- they are like cities under water
and the undulating green waves of time
are laid on them --
This is the country of our defeat
and yet
during the fall plowing a man
might stop and stand in a brown valley of the furrows
and shade his eyes to watch for the same
red patch mixed with gold
that appears on the same
spot in the hills
year after year
and grow old
plowing and plowing a ten-acre field until
the convolutions run parallel with his own brain ---
And this is a country where the young
leave quickly
unwilling to know what their fathers know
or think the words their mothers do not say --
Herschel Monteagle and Faraday
lakeland rockland and hill country
a little adjacent to where the world is
a little north of where the cities are and
sometime
we may go back there
to the country of our defeat
Wollaston Elzevir and Dungannon
and Weslemkoon lake land
where the high townships of Cashel
McClure and Marmora once were ---
But it's been a long time since
and we must enquire the way
of strangers --
