Ossuaries Paperback - 2010

Excerpt

ossuary I
 
I lived and loved, some might say,
in momentous times,
looking back, my dreams were full of prisons
 
in our narcotic drifting slumbers,
so many dreams of course were full of prisons,
mine were without relief
 
in our induced days and our wingless days,
my every waking was incarcerated,
each square metre of air so toxic with violence
 
the atmospheres were breathless there,
the bronchial trees were ligatured
with carbons
 
some damage I had expected, but no one
expects the violence of glances, of offices,
of walkways and train stations, of bathroom mirrors
 
especially, the vicious telephones, the coarseness of
daylight, the brusque decisions of air,
the casual homicides of dresses
 
what brutal hours, what brutal days,
do not say, oh find the good in it, do not say,
there was virtue; there was no virtue, not even in me
 
let us begin from there, restraining metals
covered my heart, rivulets
of some unknown substance transfused my veins
 
at night, especially at night, it is always at night,
a wall of concrete enclosed me,
it was impossible to open my eyes
 
I lived like this as I said without care,
tanks rolled into my life, grenades took root
in my uterus, I was sickly each morning, so dearly
 
what to say,
life went on around me,
I laughed, I had drinks, I gathered with friends
 
we grinned our aluminum teeth,
we exhaled our venomous breaths,
we tried to be calm in the invisible architecture
 
we incubated, like cluster bombs,
whole lives waiting, whole stellar regions,
discoveries of nebulae, and compassion
 
from the cities the electric rains pierced us,
the ceaseless bitter days folded like good linen,
the phosphorous streets gave off their harmful lights
 
we bit our fingernails to blue buttons,
we staggered at the high approach of doorways,
plunged repeatedly to our deaths only to be revived
 
by zoos, parades, experiments, exhibits, television sets,
oh we wanted to leave, we wanted to leave
the aspirated syllables and villages, the skeletal
 
dance floors, the vacant, vacant moons that tortured us,
when the jailers went home and the spectators drifted
away and the scientists finished their work
 
like a bad dog chained to an empty gas station,
for blue blue nights,
I got worse and worse, so troubling
 
I would fall dead like a specimen,
at the anthropometric spectacles
on the Champ de Mars, the Jardin d’Acclimatation
 
the mobile addresses of the autopsy fields,
though I could see no roads,
I was paid for losing everything, even eyesight
 
I lived in the eternal villages, I lived like a doll,
a shaggy doll with a beak, a bell, a red mouth,
I thought, this was the way people lived, I lived
 
I had nights of insentient adjectives,
shale nights, pebbled nights, stone nights,
igneous nights, of these nights, the speechlessness
 
I recall, the right ribs of the lit moon,
the left hip of the lit moon,
what is your name they asked, I said nothing
 
I heard the conspiratorial water,
I heard the only stone, I ate her shoulder,
I could not hear myself, you are mistaken I said to no one
 
the chain-link fences glittered like jewellery,
expensive jewellery, portable jewellery,
I lost verbs, whole, like the hull of almonds
 
after consideration you will discover, as I,
that verbs are a tragedy, a bleeding cliffside, explosions,
I’m better off without, with vermillion, candles
 
this bedding, this mercy,
this stretcher, this solitary perfectable strangeness,
and edge, such cloth this compass
 
of mine, of earth, of mourners of these
reasons, of which fairgrounds, of which theories
of plurals, of specimens of least and most, and most
 
of expeditions,
then travels and wonders then journeys,
then photographs and photographs of course
 
the multiplications of which, the enormity of this,
and drill-bits and hammers and again handcuffs,
and again rope, coarse business but there
 
some investigations, then again the calculations,
such hours, such expansions, the mind dizzy
with leaps, such handles, of wood, of thought
 
and then science, all science, all murder,
melancholic skulls, pliant to each fingertip,
these chromatic scales, these calipers the needle
 
in the tongue, the eyes’ eye, so
whole diameters, circumferences, locutions,
an orgy of measurements, a festival of inches
 
gardens and paraphernalia of measurements,
unificatory data, curious data,
beautiful and sensuous data, oh yes beautiful
 
now, of attractions and spectacles of other sheer forces,
and types in the universe, the necessary
exotic measurements, rarest, rarest measuring tapes
 
a sudden unificatory nakedness, bificatory nakedness,
of numbers, of violent fantasms
at exhibitions again, of walks, of promenades
 
at fairs with products, new widgets, human widgets,
with music, oh wonders,
the implications
 
then early in this life, like mountains,
already pictures and pictures, before pictures,
after pictures and cameras
 
their sickness, eye sickness, eye murder,
murder sickness, hunger sickness,
this serendipity of calculators, of footprints
 
with fossils, their wingspan of all time,
at crepuscules’ rare peace time, if only,
like water, in daytime, no solace, so, so different
 
from solitude, all solitude, all madness,
so furious, so numerous, the head, the markets,
the soles of the feet, so burnt, so thin
 
and the taste, so meagre, so light-headed,
the cloud flashes, the lightning geometry,
the core of reflectivity so vastly, vastly vast
 
the wait now, lumens of aches, such aches,
the horizontal and the vertical aches of lightning,
its acoustics, loud pianos, percussive yet
 
strings and quartets, multicellular runnels yet and yet,
the altitude of the passageway, its precipitation
and grand arithmetic, the segments
 
the latitudes of where, where and here,
its contours, its eccentric curvatures,
so presently, angular and nautical, all presently
 
just fine my lungs, just fine,
hypothesis absolutely, but just fine,
why lungs, strange theory
 
oh yes and the magnitude of jaundice, trenches,
like war, continuous areas and registers, logarithms
so unexplainable, rapid scales, high notes
 
besides, anyway so thermal, atmospheric,
wondrous aggressions, approximately here,
elaborate like radiation and seismic, yes all over
 
the bodies’ symptoms of algebraic floods,
tiredness for one, weariness actually,
weary with magnetic embryos
 
petals, yes petals of sick balm please, now yes,
for my esophagus, analgesics of indigo,
of wires, of electric shocks, why eucalyptus leaves
 
of course lemon grass, labernum, please, lion’s claw,
remedies of cloves, bitter bark,
still birdless though, worldless
 
asthma with blueness, then music,
gardens truthfully, truthfully nauseous with
tonsured numbers, volumes of fibres, embroidery
 
and hair nets of violence, blue,
like machine guns, of course knives, extensions
of blueness, all right then wherever
 
same radiations, lines in the forehead,
tapers, electrodes, invisible to the eyes,
official hammers and corkscrews, official grass
 
official cities now for appearances after all this,
all these appearances, generous, for certain
scraggly, wan, and robust appearances
 
assignments and hidden schedules of attendance,
a promise of blindness, a lover’s clasp of
violent syntax and the beginning syllabi of verblessness

Media reviews

Praise for Dionne Brand:
"[Brand] makes music and sense of our complex age."
— Jury citation, Governor General's Award

"Brand's luscious and ferocious lines go beyond a critique of dystopian realities to construct, in themselves, in their keen, lyric intelligence, an oasis of truth, compassion, and sensuality."
— Jury Citation, Griffin Poetry Prize

"[Inventory] shows there's no better chronicler of the ache in our body politic…. In the face of the desensitization that comes with a steady diet of the passing horrors contained in the daily news, Inventory is a kind of re-sensitization: lyrically compelling, impassioned and stirring."
— Toronto Star

"Inventory is damning without being superior, sorrowful without falling into self-pity, joyful without becoming naïve…. Inventory is thought-provoking enough with these nuances of rage, despair, guilt. What makes it even more powerful, and hard to put down, is Brand's willingness to match the strength of these desolate lists with a strength of music, dream and intimate feeling."
— Globe and Mail

"You don't read Dionne Brand, you hear her."
— Toronto Life