Excerpt

Even for a funeral, Pete Torgerson’s service was a glum affair,
Spanger thought. Everyone who could be expected to attend a
mayor’s funeral was there. The lieutenant governor, looking preoccupied,
represented the state administration. The minister read the
23rd Psalm, the choir sang “In The Garden,” people paid the
widow their respects at the reception, and all went home with a
sense of relief.
The hobo measure slipped off the council’s agenda. Not even
Frank Stout mentioned it again. The council set a special election
for November to fill the final year of Torgerson’s term and
appointed Ken Spear to serve as acting mayor in the interim.
Spanger knew Spear would run.A group of businessmen
was trying to convince Spanger to be a candidate. Without
Torgerson to contend with, he had the opportunity to mould
the police department into the organization he wanted. Still, he
liked the idea of leading the town. His family could not live on the
salary of a part-time mayor, but his share in the orchard produced a
fair income, and the prospect of spending more time on the ranch
appealed to him. Politics wasn’t what he had educated himself for,
but it could be what he was meant to do. When he asked Phyllis
about it, she said, “Is that what you want?” Up here at the top of the
valley, he thought it was.

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Penepole Says

…your splendid heart,
splendid since I chose it,
will always be somewhere else
and with the words I’ll sever
the threads that tie me
to a particular man
for who I long
until Odysseus becomes symbol
of nostalgia
and sails the seas
in everybody’s mind.
I forget you daily, passionately
that you’ll cleanse yourself of the sins
of sweetness and smell
and completely clean you’ll enter
the realm of immortality.
This job is hard and joyless.
my only reward
is that I finally understand
what’s human presence
what’s absence
or how the ego functions
in such desolation, in such long time
that nothing stops the tomorrow
the body always renews itself
gets up and goes to bed
as if someone chops it
sometimes sick, sometimes in love
hoping that
what of the touch it loses
it gains in substance.

(If this poem spoke to you, you may find more about this translation book in the following links)

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I Want to Leave
I want to leave this place, to go far away
I want to become golden dust in the air
simple element, free, brave
to an unfamiliar new land I’ll go
where things of the world will appear
like dreams and they’ll talk to the soul
where the nice faces of people will smile
and where I too shall be beautiful
where, my god, darkness wouldn’t exist
in the night, nor in the despair of the place
upon the horrible skyline or in the wind’s wailing
nor in the glances or words of people
where there won’t remain anything
but a little joy and satisfaction
where all will say that they have left forever
that perhaps they are all already dead.

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Hestia
The merciful Hestia built my dwelling
echo of a gallop
heard in faraway lands
sound of a comma
I noticed
the exclamation
of a woman’s nipple
softly touched, aroused
the exhausted tree stopped
its rustle and I existed
in vague limbo, man
without a homeland
homophonic crickets spoke of duty
foggy installment of guilt which
I carried into this world from
the serenity of the blessed souls
an unbroken link
to my ancestors’ beauty
wrath of barbarians at the cross points
of history and I felt Fate
leaning over my cradle
to remind me of
my future war against
shadows and
prickly pears seeds
the slow crawl of pain
had already commenced
my easy path to humanness

(If this poem spoke to you, you may find more about this beautiful poetry book in the following link)

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Origin of Life
The origin of life starts
from the mythical zero
and the death of the enigmatic God
before the immenseness that I am
an escape from the unheard-of authenticity
I learn to grow old by stumbling,
by searching for my life in the Beginning of Time
light isn’t the exclusive property of the baby
who vaguely remembers darkness
and knows that greediness exists
in the innocence of things
in the whistling sound of water
beyond the shadows over another land
each being a goodbye
that floats over the flattened time
over the foggy skull of the old man
tightly held by the net
that signals to the water
verses that once
it tried to discover
in the origin of kites.

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Excerpt

School Days
The Colson district had a small schoolhouse situated in the corner
of a farmer’s field, one and a half miles northwest of the Fielding
farm. When it was built in 1920 the children of the district almost
filled the thirty seats in the one-room learning establishment.
According to the registers stored at the Department of Education in
the capital city of Regina, Benjamin Fielding attended school there
up to the end of the seventh grade. Had anyone investigated those
old records, they may have noted that it was not uncommon for
the formal education of a boy from the districts to terminate anywhere
after grade seven. Seldom did a boy’s name appear beyond
the ninth grade.
The McNeill brothers were the exception. Their grandfather, Andrew
McNeill, had a healthy respect for education, a characteristic
he passed down to his son and thence to his grandsons. And although
Dave, being the eldest, did not have the advantages of his
younger brother, he did manage to complete the tenth grade with
excellent marks, before his services were required full time on the
farm. Alan, on the other hand, was one of the few country boys
who went on to high school in Bradshaw, graduating in 1939, only
months before the onset of the Second World War.
Dave, like his father and grandfather before him, was committed
to procuring the best possible education for any offspring he might
produce. So, even before his son was born, Dave began to take an
active interest in the Colson school district. Two years after arriving
home from overseas he became a trustee on the school board
which, since 1947, had been chaired by Arnold Johnson.
Sarah had been inside Colson School only once, shortly before…

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SENSUAL ELPINOR

…Emptied is the golden barrel
the sun became a rag
with a middle-aged woman’s neck
whose cough never ends;
she grieves for the end of summer
with its gold on her shoulders and on her mound.
Oh woman who lost your light
hear, the blind man sings.
It got dark, close the windows;
make flutes from yesterday’s canes,
and don’t open no matter how they knock;
they shout but have nothing to say.
Take cyclamens, pine needles,
lilies from the sand, sea-anemones;
oh woman who lost your mind
listen, the water’s ghost goes by…
‘Athens. Events occur rapidly,
the people have heard. The minister
declared. There is no time left…’
‘…take cyclamens…pine needles…
lilies from the sand…pine needles…
oh woman…’
“It is definitely stronger.
The war…”

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