Immigrantsong

By blue Ontario's shore I walk,
Through the slatted blinds and shadowed windows
Of an office cell, scuff
Over weed-strewn rail tracks, pass
Beneath the highway’s rusted stilts, skirt
A line of steel and concrete stacks
Girding the waters' edge, catch
Curls of sulphur
In a wisp of wind that scarves
Along the Sound from Sudbury, spot
Three white fish, belly-up
In the shallows, stretch
My legs to the pulse and pound of the city.

Opulence pursues me, in the rivet
Self-importance of a lawyer’s gaze
Speeding twixt King and Queen
To a lunch-time tryst.
Opulence towers above me
In tall buildings where air-conditioners
Whisper secrets to lonely men
And secretaries dream of lovers rampant
In a codpiece stuffed with dollar bills.
Wealth and dreams of wealth
Drift in the busy air, coiling
Round lottery-ticket stalls
On street corners and in aluminium malls,
With a wanton flutter of the soul,
And then meander on, down
Yonge and Bay, down beyond
The Royal York Hotel lost in memories
Of a stately age, down beneath
The lakeshore tunnel, accosting
This pedestrian and that, down
Into the lake itself.

I turn westward, as a migrant
Follows the sun.

Once the people of the longhouse shared
This place with deer and elk
With scented pine and aspen tambourining
In a silver breeze;
They drank quietly of life and war
And of the silence of the shore.
And died, melting like snow
Upon a chinook night, bequeathing images
Of scattered fugitives with hunted eyes
And the two-cent passions of an alien race.
Their sons and daughters yet appear on stage
Garbed in nostalgia and with a stern expression
Cast for dignity before a crowd
As fleeting stars of scream and rage.

I see you loiter with malingering intent
Casting for a quarter on Bloor Street West
With hair lank and straight black
And an empty bottle hanging from a pocket
Like a guilty thief come to the bitter end.

West, through ramshackle streets
With market stalls, and unfamiliar tongues
Bargaining, and outstretched hands
Beckoning, and fingers coining.

So many here that fled:

From the fires and fetters of Europe,
Whose creeds and gods and effigies
Chained the leaping of our spirit
And burned our hearts on altars
Of doctrinal and political ambition.

And from the wastes of poverty,
Lands of crooked limbs and minds
Misshapen by deficiencies of vitamins and trust.

Westward,
Eye intent upon a patch of forest
A hut squatting in a morning mist
A door proof against the avarice of time and man.

Meeting at best indifference
From the locals and at times contempt,
Quiet, deferential, obsequious to suit,
We sweep the streets, wash out latreens -
Our souls for rent if need be as we search
A final lodging for our dreams -
Drag our furniture on garbage night
From sidewalk dumps in Rosedale and Forest Hill,
Singing with success as hunters
Returning from the kill.....

I too burst into song, astride my vision,
Drunk with the vastness before me,
Join my voice to the call
Of wolf and loon on moonlit nights
Proclaiming their dominion,
My thoughts to the spindrift shimmer
Of lakes and rivers running free.

I will walk upon that distant soil;
I will tread those white valleys flowing
Before me into a white horizon,
All the whiteness of my days before me
And dream they will bleed with my passing.