3 Al Purdys

Stand in the swaying boxcar doorway
Moving east, away from the sunset
And after a while the eyes digest a country
And the belly perceives a mapmaker's vision
In dust and dirt on the face and hands here
Its smell drawn deep through the nostrils
Down to the lungs and spurts through the bloodstream
Campaigns in the lower intestine chants love songs to the kidneys

After a while there is no arrival and no departure possible any more
You are where you were always going and the shape of home is under your fingernails

I'm a product of some parents of the sort that shouldn't breed
Didn't get much schooling past learning how to read
Got the poetry bug in some forgotten institution
When first I did embark on this career of destitution

The beauty of language set a hook in my soul
Me like a breadcrust soaking soup from a bowl
You can call this a rant but I declare, I declaim
Al Purdy's poems are the name of the game
The winds of fate blow where they will
I'll give you three Al Purdy's for a 20 dollar bill

Porkers in the counting house counting out the bacon
Matter's getting darker in the universe they're making
They love the little guy until they get a better offer
With the dollar getting smaller they can fit more in their coffers

The doings on the corner neither sung nor seen
They're circling the shopping carts at Sherbourne and Queen
I resemble that assembly but I'm not the same
Al Purdy's poems are the name of my game
The winds of fate blow where they will
I'll give you three Al Purdy's for a 20 dollar bill

You can spit on the prophet but respect the word
I've got some lines I want to spin you that you ought to have heard
The winds of fate blow where they will
I'll give you three Al Purdy's for a 20 dollar bill

The winds of fate blow where they will
I'll give you three Al Purdy's for a 20 dollar bill

And after the essence of everything had exchanged itself for words
And became another being and could even be summoned
From the far distance we chanted a spell of names
And we said, "Mountain be our friend"
And we said, "River guard us from enemies"
And we said what it seemed the Gods themselves might say
If we had dreamed them and they had dreamed us from their high places

And they spoke to us in the forest from the river and the mountain
And the mouths of the ochre-painted dead had speech again
And the waters spoke and the speech had words
And our children remembered