Letters to Czeslaw Milosz 

 

[1]

 

A circus swaggers to town. Its tents

flop down like the lopped-off ears of giants.

Stink smears the air, spreads like a rash:

elephant shit and elephant skin, smells

of lions and tigers in caged dens. Shriner

circus men go dwarfed under red dummy hats,

trace circles around the stage in their golf-carts.

All’s a bestiary parceled into tricks and danger

for a kid’s vacant imagination, who stares

and slops hot toffee into his mouth.

Smoke pilfers a darkening purple sky

and disappears through a hole in the sky.

What isn’t here for you, Milosz? Either

we despair or we forget about it. Forget about it. 

 

 

[2]

 

 

Two possible truths here Milosz:

Solar systems expand in expanding

space, retract like collapsing rubber

bands, find shelter in black holes

where nothing is and nothing is

for a really long time. You and I

find a corner table, drink a bottle

of scotch aged since the last ice age

near the shores of the North Sea

so that you can taste the sea ebb

down your throat. We’re either

together like that, identical under

roaming stars and suns, or there’s that hole

and nothing and still that hole and nothing.

 

---

 

Darren Bifford studied philosophy at the universities of Victoria, Dalhousie and McGill. He has most recently taught in the Humanities Department at Champlain College, St Lambert. The poems appearing here, and others, are forthcoming this winter in a limited edition by Cactus Press (Toronto).