Setting the Table (by Don McKay)

Setting the Table (by Don McKay)

Original Text
Don McKay, Camber: Selected Poems, 1983-2000 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2004). This poem is reproduced on the Griffin Prize Web Site (from a volume on the 2005 Canadian Shortlist).
11. Knife
2who comes to the table fresh
3from killing the pig, edge
4of edges,
5entry into zip.
6    Knife
7who can swim as its secret
8through the dialogue or glimmer
9in a kitchen drawer. Who first appeared
10in God’s hand to divide
11the day from the night, then the sheep
12from the goats, then from the other
13sheep, then from their comfortable
14fleeces. Nothing sinister in this except
15it had to happen and it was the first
16to have to. The imperative
17mood. For what we are about to take
18we must be grateful.
192. Fork
20a touch of kestrel,
21of Chopin, your hand with its fork
22hovers above the plate, or punctuates
23a proposition. This is the devil’s favourite
24instrument, the fourfold
25family of prongs: Hard Place,
26Rock, Something You Should Know,
27and For Your Own Good. At rest,
28face up, it says,
29please, its tines
30pathetic as an old man’s fingers on a bed.
31Face down it says
32anything that moves.
333. Spoon
34whose eloquence
35is tongueless, witless, fingerless,
36an absent egg.
37Hi Ho, sing knife and fork, as off they go,
38chummy as good cop and bad cop,
39to interrogate the supper. Spoon waits
40and reflects your expression,
41inverted, in its tarnished moonlight. It knows
42what it knows. It knows hunger
43from the inside
44out.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2011