thirsty (by Dionne Brand)

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

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