Buffam - The Irrationalist

THE
IRRATIONALIST SUZANNE BUFFAM POEMS Copyright 2010 Suzanne Buffam All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Distribution of this electronic edition via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal. Please do not participate in electronic piracy of copyrighted material; purchase only authorized electronic editions. We appreciate your support of the authors rights. 110 Spadina Avenue, Suite 801 Toronto, ON, M5V 2K4 Tel 416-363-4343 Fax 416-363-1017 www.houseofanansi.com LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA Buffam, Suzanne, 1972 The irrationalist / Suzanne Buffam. Poems. Poems.

ISBN 978-0-88784-307-5 I. Title. PS8603.U52I77 2010 C811.6 C2009-906400-6 Cover design: Bill Douglas at The Bang Cover image: Old Modern Handicrafts Ship in a bottle, featured on the cover, is manufactured in Vietnam by Old Modern Handicrafts and distributed by Capt. Jim at capt.jimscar-go.

We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund. For Mira There is another world, but it is inside this one.

Paul Eluard I RUINED INTERIOR In the beginning was the world. Then the new world. Then the new world order Which resembles the old one, Doesnt it? Its crumbling Aqueducts. Its trinkets and shingles. Its pathways lacquered in fog. If all weve done is blink a bit And touch things, Notice how dust describes A tin can by not falling Where it sits, or how a red sleeve Glimpsed through curtains Mimics the tip of a flickering Wing, was the whole day a waste Or can worth be conferred On a less than epic urge? Bow-wow Says the doggie on page two.

Ahoy says the sailor. Arise says the tired queen And face the highway The donut shops, and the boardwalk. It rained today. You can see Perfect inversions of streetlights Suspended in drops on the window. You can see the skyline Trying to hold up the sky. Dont tell me theres another, Better place.

Dont tell me Theres a sea Above our dreaming sea And through the windows of heaven The rains come down. IF YOU SEE IT WHAT IS IT YOU SEE I didnt look at the fire. I looked into it. I saw a wall of books Crash down and bury me Centuries deep in red leather. I saw a statue in a park Shake dust from its fist And a ship called Everything Sink down on rusted wings. Ten thousand triangles collapsed Into a point And the point was this.

I cannot tell you what I saw. My catastrophe was sweet And nothing like yours Although we may sip From the same Broken cup all afternoon. AMOR FATI Any idiot can become a genius if she wants it badly enough. One must study how the crow flies. One must say to oneself as the crow flies so fly I. In the dream I am an empty tree.

One by one my branches fill with silent crows that have travelled great distances to reach me. Each crow contains a golden seed of knowledge locked in its craw and by containing them all in my lofty crown I contain all knowledge of the kingdom. My attempts to remember are proof in themselves. At times one must accompany a shadow like the moon above a field of bitter greens. In this wretched spirit the pilgrim applies herself and is rewarded. I only felt in the midst of my suffering the presence of a love, she explains, like that which one can read in the smile on a beloved face.

I cant help what I want. There is no such thing as a dream that comes true. Every dream is already true the moment it is dreamed. THE NEW EXPERIENCE I was ready for a new experience. All the old ones had burned out. They lay in little ashy heaps along the roadside And blew in drifts across the fairgrounds and fields.

From a distance some appeared to be smouldering But when I approached with my hat in my hands They let out small puffs of smoke and expired. Through the windows of houses I saw lives lit up With the otherworldly glow of tv And these were smoking a little bit too. I flew to Rome. I flew to Greece. I sat on a rock in the shade of the Acropolis And conjured dusky columns in the clouds. I watched waves lap the crumbling coast.

I heard wind strip the woods. I saw the last living snow leopard Pacing in the dirt. Experience taught me That nothing worth doing is worth doing For the sake of experience alone. I bit into an apple that tasted sweetly of time. The sun came out. It was the old sun With only a few billion years left to shine.

HAPPY HOUR Ill have an Icecap. Make it a double. Bring me a Fog on the River, A Niagara Falls on the rocks, And a Tempest with a chaser of Hail. I dont want to be rescued. I want to crawl through a honeycomb Of subglacial passageways, Shove my head under Gods faucet And keep chugging until I pass out. I want thirst to drink me.

I want to come back as a bucket of blood. OCCASIONAL POEM Today is the thirteen thousand, one hundred and forty-first day of the rest of my life. There is no way to know how many beans are in the jar without removing them one by one. If I find it harder to learn the future tense than the younger students in my Spanish class do, it is because so much more of my life resides in the past. Still I try to live in the moment, where everything is endlessly happening at once. The earth spins, the curtain lifts, clouds appear to be floating, and yet they are, in fact, constantly falling.

To be ahead of ones time may be the same as being very far behind it. When he saw the bison leaping off the walls at Lascaux, Picasso turned to his guide and lamented the achievements of modern art. We have discovered nothing, he is reported to have said. And yet today is different from yesterday. Yesterday only contained itself and the days leading up to it, while today contains itself, yesterday, plus all the endless days before that. Let us celebrate.

Let us separate the movement from the moving thing. DEATH TOLL RISES IN BLACK SEA SINKING From where I stand The world is a warm blue bath. I can wash my feet in it. I can pick a cloud Any cloud And watch it nudge a mast Across a harbour of light. I have the potential For offspring inside me And if it is desire that I lack I can sit down on a rock And wait for my lack To dissolve. I can do so And so I do so Waiting with my feet At the edge of the bath Until at length it is time To lug my body home.

There I read about a storm In the east In a story from the west About a boatload of sailors Who sank that the water would rise. THE SOLITARY ANGLER One day I woke up And did not fear the old gods. I called the number on my fridge And when the movers arrived I gave them everything. On my way out of town I spat into the wind And did not linger to see where it landed. Who can say for sure If the dream has ended or begun? A frail dimness rims my craft. Stars swim to the surface of a bottomless well And sink when I take my eyes off them.

There is no greater calamity Than to underestimate the strength of your enemy. The ancients saw the stars And called them angels. They turned everything else into a clock. I say wear a watch if you must But dont count on it. THE ARENA The judges invite me to enter a contest of wits. If I win, I will be ashamed of myself for having stooped to enter such an unworthy contest in the first place.