thirsty (by Dionne Brand)

thirsty (by Dionne Brand)

Original Text
Dionne Brand, thirsty (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2002). This poem is reproduced on the Griffin Prize Web Site (from a volume on the 2003 Canadian Shortlist).
1This city is beauty
2unbreakable and amorous as eyelids,
3in the streets, pressed with fierce departures,
4submerged landings,
5I am innocent as thresholds
6and smashed night birds, lovesick,
7as empty elevators
8let me declare doorways,
9corners, pursuit, let me say
10standing here in eyelashes, in
11invisible breasts, in the shrinking lake
12in the tiny shops of untrue recollections,
13the brittle, gnawed life we live,
14I am held, and held
15the touch of everything blushes me,
16pigeons and wrecked boys,
17half-dead hours, blind musicians,
18inconclusive women in bruised dresses
19even the habitual grey-suited men with terrible
20briefcases, how come, how come
21I anticipate nothing as intimate as history
22would I have had a different life
23failing this embrace with broken things,
24iridescent veins, ecstatic bullets, small cracks
25in the brain, would I know these particular facts,
26how a phrase scars a cheek, how water
27dries love out, this, a thought as casual
28as any second eviscerates a breath
29and this, we meet in careless intervals,
30in coffee bars, gas stations, in prosthetic
31conversations, lotteries, untranslatable
32mouths, in versions of what we may be,
33a tremor of the hand in the realization
34of endings, a glancing blow of tears
35on skin, the keen dismissal in speed
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2011