Image-Nation 21 (territory (by Robin Blaser)

Griffin Prize for Excellence In Poetry, The (2001 - 0)

Original Text

Robin Blaser, The Holy Forest: Collected Poems, ed. Miriam Nichols, foreword by Robert Creeley, afterword by Charles Bernstein (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). This poem is reproduced on the Griffin Prize Web Site (from the winning volume on the Canadian Shortlist 2008). Robin Blaser previously won the first Griffin Trust Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006.

1wandering to the other, wandering

2the spiritual realities, skilled in all

3ways of contending, he did not search

4out death or courage, did not

5found something, a country,

6or end it, but made it endless,

7that is his claim to fame, to

8seek out what is beyond any single

9man or woman, or the multiples

10of them the magic country that

11is homeland

12the bridges I strained for, strings

13of my vastness in language, and

14the cars rushed by in both

15directions flashing at one another

16the mechanic of splendour, sought

17after, chanted in the windy

18cables and the river sailed,

19haphazard, under the solitude

20he had only the stories to tell, naked

21and plotless, the spiritual territories,

22earth-images and sky-maps, dark

23at the edges

24the mechanic of the marvelous dreamed

25of Stalin and Hitler and the ordinary,

26endlessly knew where he had gone

27and, then, came back, whatever happens

28if, I said--I was talking to religionists--

29you gain social justice,

30solve the whole terror, then where

31is god? certainly not in happiness

32and since god is not in unhappiness,

33there you have it the skilled

34adventure in hostilities with no name

RPO poem Editors

Ian Lancashire

RPO Edition

2011