"Voyageurs" by Richard Wagamese
Sep. 24th, 2016 08:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yuuagoI was going to copy this out longhand to keep for myself, but then it occurred to me that maybe others would enjoy it, too.
It's published in Runaway Dreams, which is an excellent volume and in truth has so much awesome work in it that it's really hard to pick favourites. Go read it if you love poetry - totally worth it. I'm not sure how easily available it is outside of Canada, though.
Sometimes I read something and get this feeling - this "I want to write like that!" feeling. I get it with Hauge's work - frequently. But I get it with Wagamese, too, especially here. This image of Saskatoon in the cold is so... vivid and sharp. I love it.
Voyageurs
Dvorak wrote the "Serenade for Strings"
in just twelve days and trudging through
the snow drifts along the bluffs above
the North Saskatchewan River with Saskatoon
huffing its breath across the frozen fling
of it in the valley, the violas sashay
in waltz time through the headphones
and I tuck my chin closer to my chest
and walk in counterpoint to the edge
and gaze in rapt wonder at the skill of
this Czech composer and the hand of Creator
at work together in the same morning
twinkling with frost
the river current buckled ice and sent
shards of it upward hard into a January
sky pale blue as a sled dog's eye
and the ice crystals in the air wink
in the sun like spirits dancing
so that Dvorak's masterpiece becomes
a divertimento to the history that clings
t the banks of this river and there's
something in the caesura that hearkens
to a voyageur's song perhaps when
this river bore stout-hearted strangers
into places where only the Cree
and the buffalo could last the bitter
snap of the Long Snow Moons
and starvation was the only verb
in a language built on nouns
crows hop across the drifts
like eighth notes and the larghetto
when it eases in as wistful as a
prayer for home becomes the idea
that we're all voyageurs really
paddling relentlessly for points beyond
what we've come to know of ourselves
and time and the places we occupy
so that history whether it comes
in a serenade, a fugue, a chanson
or a chant sung with drums
made of deer hide becomes
the same song eventually and rivers
like this contain it
hold it, shape it to us
so it rides loose and easy
on our shoulders
Dvorak wrote the "Serenade" in 1875
and turning to the city now
marching to the beat of the teeth
of the wind that churns upward
suddenly out of the valley
Saskatoon becomes the everywhere
of my experience and I ride the current of it
to the resolution of the theme
It's published in Runaway Dreams, which is an excellent volume and in truth has so much awesome work in it that it's really hard to pick favourites. Go read it if you love poetry - totally worth it. I'm not sure how easily available it is outside of Canada, though.
Sometimes I read something and get this feeling - this "I want to write like that!" feeling. I get it with Hauge's work - frequently. But I get it with Wagamese, too, especially here. This image of Saskatoon in the cold is so... vivid and sharp. I love it.
Voyageurs
Dvorak wrote the "Serenade for Strings"
in just twelve days and trudging through
the snow drifts along the bluffs above
the North Saskatchewan River with Saskatoon
huffing its breath across the frozen fling
of it in the valley, the violas sashay
in waltz time through the headphones
and I tuck my chin closer to my chest
and walk in counterpoint to the edge
and gaze in rapt wonder at the skill of
this Czech composer and the hand of Creator
at work together in the same morning
twinkling with frost
the river current buckled ice and sent
shards of it upward hard into a January
sky pale blue as a sled dog's eye
and the ice crystals in the air wink
in the sun like spirits dancing
so that Dvorak's masterpiece becomes
a divertimento to the history that clings
t the banks of this river and there's
something in the caesura that hearkens
to a voyageur's song perhaps when
this river bore stout-hearted strangers
into places where only the Cree
and the buffalo could last the bitter
snap of the Long Snow Moons
and starvation was the only verb
in a language built on nouns
crows hop across the drifts
like eighth notes and the larghetto
when it eases in as wistful as a
prayer for home becomes the idea
that we're all voyageurs really
paddling relentlessly for points beyond
what we've come to know of ourselves
and time and the places we occupy
so that history whether it comes
in a serenade, a fugue, a chanson
or a chant sung with drums
made of deer hide becomes
the same song eventually and rivers
like this contain it
hold it, shape it to us
so it rides loose and easy
on our shoulders
Dvorak wrote the "Serenade" in 1875
and turning to the city now
marching to the beat of the teeth
of the wind that churns upward
suddenly out of the valley
Saskatoon becomes the everywhere
of my experience and I ride the current of it
to the resolution of the theme
Yuu. Fic writer & book lover. M/Canada.
no subject
Date: 2016-09-24 03:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-09-26 03:32 pm (UTC)