If I could walk out into the cold country

If I could walk out into the cold country
And see the white and innocent dawn arise;
The mist stealing away, leaving the low hills
Bathed in pale light; the pink unreal sun;
The jagged trees stabbing the cold, bright sky;
If I could walk over stubble fields white with frost
And see each separate small beaded bladed
Loaded & edged with white; or climb the fence
Of grey and twisted wood, to find and eat
The crab-apples in the pasture sharp with frost;
If I could shelter, shivering in a clump of woods
To watch the chill and beautiful day go past;
Perhaps I might find again my lost childhood,
A ghost blowing with the November wind,
Or buried in the wood, like those dead pioneers
Whose tombstones I found overgrown with brambles
Their names erased, in a unfrequented way.


From the New Oxford Book of Canadian Poetry in English 1983

Zalinka

Tom MacInnes

1

Last night in a land of triangles,

I lay in a cubicle, where

A girl in pyjamas and bangles

Slept with her hands in my hair.

2

I wondered if either or neither

Of us were properly there,

Being subject to queer aberrations--

Astral and thin aberrations--

Which leave me no base to compare:

No adequate base to compare:

But her hands with their wristful of bangles,

Were certainly fast in my hair,

While the moon made pallid equations

Thro’a delicate window there.

3

I was glad that she slept for I never

Can tell what the finish will be:

What enamoured, nocturnal endeavour

May end in the killing of me:

But, in the moonlight obscure

Of that silken, somniferous lair,

Like a poet consumed with a far lust

Of things unapproachably fair

I fancied her body of stardust-

Pounded of spices and stardust-

Out of the opulent air.

4

Then the moon, with its pale liquidations,

Fell across her in argentine bars,

And I thought: this is fine—but to-morrow

What cut of Dawn’s cold scimitars

Will sever my hold on this creature-

I mean of this creature on me?

Amorous creature of exquisite aura-

Marvel of dark glamourie.

5

What joy of folly then followed

Is beyond my expression in rhyme:

And I do not expect you to grasp it

When I speak of expansions of time:

Of reaching and zooming serenely

As it were at right angles to time:

Knowing well you will think, on your level,

This was only a dream indiscreet-

Or experience quite indiscreet:

But little I care in this instance,

What you do or do not think discreet:

O utterance futile, but sweet,

Like a parrot I pause and repeat,

In delight of my own and for nothing,

To myself I repeat and repeat:

6

Last night in a land of triangles,

I lay in a cubicle where

A girl in pyjamas and bangles

Slept with her hands in my hair.

Quiet

Come not the earliest petal here, but only

Wind, cloud, and star,

Lovely and far

Make it less lonely.

Few are the feet that seek her here, but sleeping

Thoughts sweet as flowers

Linger for hours,

Things winged, yet weeping.

Here in the immortal empire of the grasses,

Time, like one wrong

Note in a song,

With their bloom, passes.

Marjorie Pickthall

1883-1922