Compatibilist (by Ken Babstock)
Compatibilist (by Ken Babstock)
Original Text
Ken Babstock, Airstream Land Yacht (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2006).
This
poem is reproduced on the Griffin Prize Web Site (from a volume on the Canadian Shortlist 2007).
1Awareness was intermittent. It sputtered.
2 And some of the time you were seen
3 asleep. So trying to appear whole
4 you asked of the morning: Is he free
5 who is not free from pain? It started to rain
6a particulate alloy of flecked grey: the dogs
7wanted out into their atlas of smells; to pee
8 where before they had peed, and might
9 well pee again--thought it isn’t
10 a certainty. What is? In the set,
11 called Phi, of all possible physical worlds
12resembling this one, in which, at time t,
13was written ‘Is he free who is not free--’
14 and comes the cramp. Do you want
15 to be singular, onstage, praised,
16 or blamed? I watched a field of sun-
17 flowers dial their ruddy faces toward
18 what they needed and was good. At noon
19they were chalices upturned, gilt-edged,
20 and I lived in that same light but felt
21 alone. I chose to phone my brother,
22 over whom I worried, and say so.
23 He whispered, lacked affect. He’d lost
24my record collection to looming debt. I
25forgave him--through weak connections,
26 through buzz and oceanic crackle--
27 immediately, without choosing to,
28 because it was him I hadn’t lost; and
29 later cried myself to sleep. In that village
30near Dijon, called Valley of Peace,
31a pond reflected its dragonflies
32 over a black surface at night, and
33 the nuclear reactor’s far-off halo
34 of green light changed the night sky
35 to the west. A pony brayed, stamping
36a hoof on inlaid stone. The river’s reeds
37lovely, but unswimmable. World death
38 on the event horizon; vigils with candles
39 in cups. I’ve mostly replaced my records,
40 and acted in ways I can’t account for.
41 Cannot account for what you’re about
42to do. We should be held and forgiven.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2011