A Gift! A Poem by Ulrich Wendt. And What a Poem!

On the Federal Government’s Changes to the Fisheries Act

The mouth of the White Mud River is the last remaining home

Of a useless little fish – the Carmine Shiner.

It flashes ruby red to no important point

And the petty men of Ottawa can see no cash in it.

And so it has to go from the fabric of the whole.

But even though the thing is surely finished on this earth,

I raise a mild reproach.

Our dignity demands it.

             - Ulrich Wendt, May 2012

Why I Love Her by Ulrich Wendt

She builds trails that go nowhere in particular
They meander and wander in the brush along the river
As do the sinews of the heart
Or the way the mind finds comfort in ambiguity.
And though I'm sometimes caught up in the logic of pure reason,
My line running straight and purposeful
Like wolves on a savage hunt,
She remains my persuasion.

Ulrich Wendt

Ulrich Wendt talks about Valentine Love (and the land and eagles)

Clear-cutting

Love is not a subject fit for poetry.
It comes out lies, somebody said, lies
but what with my blood roaring around,
how could I agree at twenty?
Now,
lunch comes when I am in the middle
of my opinion of the government
and I think I will have warm soup or something
nice
at the homemade young Chinese couple’s
and the fellow who works at the department of trees
sits down and that’s all right and love
is not a subject fit for poetry
and I am hardly listening what
with the homemade young Chinese couple’s
apple-pie and my opinion of the government
and it is three thousand acres cut clear
and the wind is blowing the thin soil away
and the pine-needles and all
and love is not a subject fit for poetry
as bit by bit hard stone comes bare.

© Ulrich Wendt, 1976

February 14

Hard as he is to see
in the brush along the shore,
the eagle is taking flight
from tangled metaphor.
However much he loves the air
I love you more.

WHAT'S THAT ABOUT? A poem by Ulrich Wendt

What’s That About?
I.

Rolling into Winnipeg in the evening from the east,
beside the rail-yards,
the sun going down like a disaster movie of the mind,
I have the old familiar feeling that something dreadful is about to happen,
and, as usual, nothing will for a long time:
the children are all right and the house is where we left it.

II.
It’s true about the ripples in the dark water,
we’ve all made it, this self-conscious metaphor.
But the stone itself is a splash into nothing.
The stone sinks into nothing.

III.
Over in the rail-yard, beyond the weeds, is a box-car bright with new graffiti.
What’s that about?
Get up in the middle of the night,
knapsack full of rattling spray-paint cans,
find a box-car loaded and ready to move. Important, that last bit,
or it just gets painted over.

Do you do it in the dark? Or are the yard-lights bright enough?
Anyway, some of it’s not bad. But why?


IV.
Watch your work (if you timed it right) get coupled to an eastward train,
see it out of sight and what? Regret? It could have been the Sistine Chapel
if only there’d been time enough and half a chance?

Or maybe picture the journey? Clickety-clacking slowly past the rusty ditches,
and the shiny penny-making Mint, through fields of geese and flax,
rolling faster now to penetrate the shield then mile on mile
of muskeg, rocks and trees, rolling far too quickly past the art-appreciating moose.

Then slowly running through the rail towns – say, Dinorwic –
where sharp-eyed boys put pennies on the track to make them bigger
and then more rocks and trees to reach the Lakehead, seaway and the world at last?
For what? To say I’m here, I count?

V.
We’re here, we count and maybe that’s enough
but the version I prefer has us huddled in a cave
with the First People out of Africa.

A wall is daubed with grease and blood
as someone tries the colours in the feeble light;
then the fire is kicked and smudge-faced children let their eyes go big
as the sparks reveal the conscious shape of something strange and new
and all are lost in wonder as the fire dims again.

A Poem by Ulrich Wendt

Six Conversations about Pain

Three is where I’m at now.
Five is the most they give.
It’s best to start with one or two
and end with five.

When Jennifer got this far,
she still resisted the morphine.
It made her all befuddled
and her husband didn’t like it.

I never drank,
not even wine at Christmas.
But three is where I’m at.

Thanks for dropping by.
I need a witness to the will.
Please initial every page but not too low.
The Xerox tends to cut things off.

Excuse the way I look.
At least the hair’s still mine.
This time I didn’t do the chemo
– what’s the use?
Last time it fell in hunks
and I’m vainglorious.

It’s good to be alive.
Three is where I’m at.

© Ulrich Wendt, November, 2007

Poem by Ulrich Wendt

Historical Note:

In the late winter of 1945, Russian troops had penetrated deep into East Prussia along the Baltic coast - a land of dark forests and small farming villages. All those who could, had already fled before the advancing tanks. Inconveniently for his wife and daughter, the village wheelwright lay dying.

- Ulrich Wendt

Instructions for My Funeral

Let’s keep it simple. Neither of you will feel like singing, I suppose,
and the approaching drums are not the kind of music any of us likes.

Don’t dig the grave by night. Do it in the open day
to show that nothing’s being buried here of value.

Ah yes, the spot! Let’s have it by the old pear tree. It doesn’t yield
and if you need to cut the roots, who cares?

Not deep – the ground here’s hard – but deep enough.
And place me facing downward. Otherwise, without a box,
the first few clumps of dirt would be – let’s say – without appeal.

Then leave. For god’s sake leave! And leave the spade to mark the spot.

Others may come with burdens of their own
and they’ll find the digging easier.

Poem by Ulrich Wendt

Clear-cutting

Love is not a subject fit for poetry.
It comes out lies, somebody said, lies
but what with my blood roaring around,
how could I agree at twenty?
Now,
lunch comes when I am in the middle
of my opinion of the government
and I think I will have warm soup or something
nice
at the homemade young Chinese couple’s
and the fellow who works at the department of trees
sits down and that’s all right and love
is not a subject fit for poetry
and I am hardly listening what
with the homemade young Chinese couple’s
apple-pie and my opinion of the government
and it is three thousand acres cut clear
and the wind is blowing the thin soil away
and the pine-needles and all
and love is not a subject fit for poetry
as bit by bit hard stone comes bare.

CLEARANCES by Ulrich Wendt

The Highland clearances, the expulsion of the Acadians,
Shaka Zulu and the myth of empty Africa, all these things
have made me think again about the ridiculous story of original sin.
For who now lives but on dust and bones of lands long cleared of others?

Well now, Samuel, you cute little zygote,
I can hardly wait to show you around the dusty old place
being, for the moment, happily self-deluded that I am showing you
an unmarked country, trying to imagine how it will feel to be you blinking, dumbfounded, thunderstruck at everything that is absolutely
brightly shiny untouched and new.

No need for you the need to forget the rousting out
of those inconvenient folks who – having come before us –
built their dykes and farms where we wanted to be, planted their orchards
of which a single apple-tree now old, bedraggled,
blooming only every second year and even then bereft of fruit,
beside a hut long razed, remains.

For from the first day after the slamming shut of the gates of Eden,
this is what all of us have been hungry for – to walk amazed among new flowers
on empty land that is ours for the taking. You, having freshly popped out,
won’t have to work too hard imagining with the First People
the heart-thumping feel of cresting a hill in Alaska or the Dardanelles, say,
and spread before you the new valley – oh my god!- all full of the most fantastical
honey-coloured fields of grass and herds and herds of dinner on the hoof.
Paradise again, perhaps, through the back door.

The Wild Cranes of November

The wild cranes of November – where are they?
Ah yes! They can be seen dimly above the lake,
six – no, seven – specks in clouds
that are an unambiguously snow-laden grey.

I strain to point them out to little Emily.
But they can be heard with an amazing clarity.

It is my sixtieth birthday and nothing works like before –
not eyes, not ears and I am punished in my knees
when I crawl with little Emily on the floor.

But the cranes are there and it is not so bad -
not like my grandfather, say, who got laid out,
face-down, younger then than I am now,
on the worst day of the worst year of the war.

So, come for the cranes I say to little Emily.
They can be heard with such clarity.
And to myself I say happy birthday.

Ulrich Wendt, 2006