Anodyne
Sunday, January 23, 2005
 
A Few Lines at Christmas for Charlie the Cat

This is an excerpt from a longer poem called The Stars at Night by Vija Celmins, work on which was postponed in favor of completing Michelina. Charlie was our West Vancouver neighbors', though he spent most of every day at our house, and we hid him in an upstairs bedroom on the last day before they moved (They didn't seem too concerned when they came over to ask -- none too worriedly -- if we'd seen him, even to the point of politely ignoring the meowing drifting from a nearby window). The first non-authorial voice is Lawrence Weiner's, the second, Bruce Cockburn's, a song that was popular in my first year of university, and often on AM 1040 on the way to or from UBC.

Charlie died of cancer in the summer of 1995. He's buried under a stringy clematis in the back yard in West Vancouver.

– gas clouds hang,
pendant, like balls on the Christ-
mas tree, overturned, “smashed
to pieces in the still of the night” –
the cat went and hid, trembling,
on top of the newspapers stacked
by the fireplace, ornament litter & pine
needles all over the carpet, water
pan skewed, sideways, on the drop
cloth -- soaked through -- dumb
beast shivering, ears back, eyes
wide, string lights in their sockets
still glowing, shattered globes & strewn
tinsel icicles – a silver jelly-
fish spilled on the floor. A beast can
not bear its own weight
out of water, gravity
collapses, holes appear
at the heart of things. “Something
other, busy monster.” Ravening
mouth.


- posted by cjb @ 8:23 PM


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