Margaret Avison

It must have been after a

birthday; at Christmastime

daylight hasn’t the lambency

I remember as part of

the puzzling present somebody

had given me: a scribbler, empty pages, but

not for scribbling in.

Instead of a pencil box there was

a jellyglass set out, with water, and

a brand-new paint brush.

The paper was not pretty.

A pencil-point might in an upstroke

accidentally jab a hole in it.

But, painting it —

as I was told to, with only

clear water, “Behold!”

my whole being sang out, for “see”

would not have been adequate.

The pictures that emerged

were outlines? I remember

only the paper, and the wonder of it,

and how each page was turning out to be

a different picture.

There were no colours, were there?

In the analogy, there are

glorious colours

and, in some way that lacks

equivalents,

deepening colours, patterns that keep

emerging, always

more to anticipate.

For that there is no other process.

Locked in the picture is

missing the quality of the analogy of

morning light

and the delighted holder of the paint-brush

and who gave him the book, and where he found it.

Let’s go to the park where

the dogs and children

cluster and circle and run

under the sombre old trees – they are

hanging on to their swarthing

leaves – while the young

medallioned trees in the early

sun are dancing

among them.

The knapsacked students too

hurtle, always too late, focused

on there, blindingly

swerving out of the now and

here where children and dogs

and a few rather shabby, slow

old ones, straying, move

across the owners, standing with

loose leashes, intent on “their day.”

The benched but sleepless

mothers and nannies, watching,

are quieted here, warmed and fed

by the good old trees and

the shining little ones.

The physiologist says I am well over

half water.

I feel, look, solid; am

though leaky firm.

Yet I am composed

largely of water.

How the composer turned us out

this way, even the learned few do not

explain. That’s life.

And we’re in need of

more water, over and over, repeatedly

thirsty, and unclean.

The body of this earth

has water under it and

over, from

where the long winds sough

tirelessly over water, or shriek around

curved distances of ice.

Sky and earth invisibly

breathe skyfuls of

water, visible when it

finds its own level.

Even in me?

Kin to waterfalls

and glacial lakes and sloughs

and all that flows and surges,

yet I go steadily,

or without distillation climb at will

(until a dissolution

nobody anticipates).

I’m something else besides.

The biochemist does not

concern himself with this.

It too seems substance,

A vital bond threaded on an

as-if loom out there.

The strand within

thrums and shudders and twists.

It cleaves to this

colour or texture and

singles out to a rhythm

almost its own, again,

anticipating design.

But never any of us

physiologist or fisherman

or I

quite makes sense of it. We

find our own level

as prairie, auburn or

snow-streaming, sounds forever

the almost limitless.

Behind that stone before

it was rolled away

a corpse lay.

There lay all I deplore:

fear, truculence – much more

that to any other I need not say.

But behind that stone I must be sure

of deadness, to allay

self-doubt i.e. so nearly to ignore

the love and sacrifice for our

release; to nearly stray

back into the old

pursuit of virtue.

Once it is clear

it was a corpse that day,

then, then, we know the glory

of the clean place, the floor

of rock, those linens, know the hour

of His inexplicable “Peace;” the pour

— after He went away —

of wonder, readiness, simplicity,

given.