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Vol. I
Issue 4
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Little Gallery
By John V. Hicks
The pictures scratch their backs against the burlap,
muttering street noises. It is not a place to be alone.
You with the winter sun
in cold glints about your blue forested shoulder,
if I crawl into your crevices and
leave this unexplained space behind me
in my empty chair – book, pencil, key container
dumb to my whereabouts –
will the nude woman, watching, tell them
I called and she could not come?
But why should I escape, or wish to?
I am prisoner enough; no need
to touch off search parties
prying into the varying haunts
of the distressed. I am safer seated
where I can be at least passed over
without the shrug of dismissal, insult of
the casual glance, old agonies of the impaled.
Stay near me, my children; I will tell you about
the world. It is a fright of places.
You need never go; venture is but vanity;
and what you see there in the distance
were better not observed. Stay near me.
The fright here is acceptable, may be shared.
That hollow sound like knocking
is the footstep of silence in the street.
If there are faces peering from windows
we shall not see,
ears bent to our own fanciful tread
they will not hear. There are always observers;
looks dried into stretched sheet and board
reproach by impartiality, by calm, the refusal
to disagree. It is I who am judged.
Sisters under the fire, is it sacrifice
or servitude? Is your siren hair impervious
to scorch of the brush, your nakedness
proof against whatever envy, whatever ill?
No, I sense the offering to be complete.
No one will come; there will be
no inspection of your ashes,
no probing of residues for reasons,
accusations, the unexpressed regret.
Be admonished, intent is one thing
and has its rights. The free will
aligns itself readily with all purpose;
executions are to be held in question
on other scores. Be careful for nothing
if not the unities; what it is or means
deserves no answer. What it says of the maker,
the viewer, the substance, this must stand
inviolate, insist, be somehow one.
When the head inclines in assent, when
economies of choice have been cast, it is
accomplished, it is above reproof.
That look allows me my brief occupancy
and no more. You have your vantage, I mine.
Those tears are of themselves;
I was never cast in the role of comforter, nor
would wish to be entreated; whatever sorrow,
let it claim its own signifigance.
Yes, the rose is the rose always.
Is she to come, or in the delicacy
of the damask petal has she come and gone,
thieving a moment’s fragrance?
It is itself, no more.
Time has arrived, been spent, or,
spent, will not arrive. Go down,
down, indifferent honey bee,
with the small spirals of fading summer sound,
your soft flight through resonant zones.
Go back, find out the lost plain,
listen to the thunder, the trembling ground,
the wind and whistling flint.
Here in grunt and crawl of the forced march
we too find cause to remember
old freedoms, greatnesses.
Only the triangles make music.
The black thin edge of mourning
outlining docked vessel and waterfront,
snow drifting over wastes,
piling itself against the brooding pine,
the quiet end of a creative fury,
recalled blaze of birch and poplar
seeking to robe death in radiance,
all these move in their silent processions;
but the yellow triangles tinkle in my sight,
strum their fascinations above crimson square
and cluster of purple and jade grotesqueries;
and I think I shall take up the agreeable theme,
subscribe to the quiltwork proposition,
sing their inconsequential song
against the dancing through that
all’s folly and without recourse.
And now
the pictures settle, squaring in their frames,
confident. We have found each other.
The street noises would agree.
From Winter Your Sleep (Thistledown Press)© 1980, John V. Hicks. Reprinted with permission.
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John V. Hicks was born in England in 1907. As an infant, he was brought to Canada, and lived in several provinces during his early years. He attended the Collegiate Institute in Prince Albert, where he would spend the remainder of his life. Hicks wrote poetry for decades before publishing his first book, Now Is a Far Country (Thistledown Press), which appeared in 1978, seven years after his retirement. He published ten more books before his death in June, 1999.
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