'A testimonial to survival'

 

“I started writing poetry when I was about 13.” – Al Purdy

 

Born in Ontario, Canada in December, 1918, Purdy had a 56-year writing career led by a remarkable 39 books of poetry.  Often called Canada's "unofficial poet laureate,” he wrote right up to his death in 1999.  His death bed, in fact, was cluttered with his books and papers he was writing, and he was a bit chagrined by the fact that his publisher was planning a “collected works” version of his poems.

 

“A ‘collected poems' is either a gravestone or a testimonial to survival,” he said.  Here, from Beyond Remembering: The collected poems of Al Purdy – and for Saturday’s Poem – is Purdy’s,

 

        Listening to Myself

 

I see myself staggering through deep snow
lugging blocks of wood yesterday
an old man
almost falling from bodily weakness
— look down on myself from above
then front and both sides
white hair — wrinkled face and hands
it's really not very surprising
that love spoken by my voice
should be when I am listening
ridiculous
yet there it is
a foolish old man with brain on fire
stumbling through the snow

— the loss of love
that comes to mean more
than the love itself
and how to explain that?
— a still pool in the forest
that has ceased to reflect anything
except the past
— remains a sort of half-love
that is akin to kindness
and I am angry remembering
remembering the song of flesh
to flesh and bone to bone
the loss is better