Martyrology Book 5

bp Nichol

• Publisher: Coach House Books
• Year: 1994
• Print ISBN:
  9780889102514
• eBook ISBN:
  9781770561366
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Canadian Poetry
• Index: Literature

'All of Nichol's work is stamped by his desire to create texts that are engaging in themselves as well as in context, and to use indirect structural and textual devices to carry meaning. In The Martyrology different ways of speaking testify to a journey through different ways of being. Language is both the poet’s instructor and, through its various permutations, the dominant 'image' of the poem. The [nine] books of The Martyrology document a poet’s quest for insight into himself and his writing through scrupulous attention to the messages hidden in the morphology of his own speech.’ – Frank Davey

1

a road

a rod

a walk along

a long day

a dying night

an art

a log

a journal that is right

here

ere i begin²

among the streets & houses stand around me

How Land over the bridge

(du pont) to Daven’s Port

& in between a sea (mer)

Wal

full tragedies are played

accornedies

points of view: St George & St Clair

never meet

(he goes to College & becomes Beverly)

fits together in its own sense

St George to separate

Admiral & Huron history

i should’ve traced

race

against race

against

time

rimes of

coincidence

(sense arrived at in

a later reading

latter writing

related rewrite of

tone

note

placement of

St Ick or Ylus in

the hierarchy

St Iff if if fits

(alternate spellings

suggested by

George Pal in

Dr Omic’s St Andard Dictionary))

SWITCH

i live on Brun’s wick

so named’ cause it stuck out

thick as his legendary stick

into that wal of water flowed

around the foot of Casa Loma

licked its way between

the hill that castle stands on &

Russell’s Hill

or south

stretching round the ruins of what was

Harbored

Harbour D

(a harmony)

only puns someone says

i says glimpses of another truth

’nother story worth the tell

’ll do as well as Mag Mell

Olympus or

Shanghalla

all the old bars the saints’d gather at

this new one comes into our ken

i ‘understand’ all i didn’t see before

connect these fact zones

create fictions

as someone (Brun?) did before me

if i read the map aright

‘Brun’s wick ken’d al[1]’³

set ablaze by light

it was the light!

a candle

(Kendal)

burning

hierarchies suggested in a reading

Wal Mer’s pa Dina Madi’[s] son

(her one &

only) images of

ancient lineages

St Orm the saint of ships & seas

was he Wal Mer’s father

Dina Madi’s son

& if the one

then all these names could be

nicknames

for claimd similur things

(Wal Mer stretches south

into the bluer strait

streets

houses lived in in my time

short tho it’s been

one-third gone

still learning

trying to move on)

more than the grand gestures aspired to

actions give the truth to speech

content of a daily life

our struggle

(ideals arrayed against the actual i deals) each morning

step out that door

onto this wick forms part of the shore

head north for the bridge

rise early

get to work before the sky turns grey with smoke

worlds of dreams & felt feelings

memories evoked of childhood despair

lost loves & lustres in this present world they are too present in

struggle to return them to the past again

archaeo logically

walked today west thru snow across Dupont

frozen streets/seas thot then of Kit James

dead this past year

caught myself (briefly) wondering

‘what’s Kit doing?’

but he is done

one takes so long accepting

the death of friends/

/relationships

new twists your life takes

‘in the inner circle of communication

the poet is opposed on two sides of thought’

& i am mourning his passing

caught up in the snow

Spadina

a dirt road

trucks rumbling north for the subway’s construction

underground

underworld

under wal

mermur

murmer

mer made memories

white world of whispered presences

(Kit?)

death’s deed’s done

d

ath’s dead’s d

ne

d’ath’s d’ad’s d’n

& gone

‘gin ag’in th’n

on

as snow’s gone

spring’s come

changes tone’s tune

my foots moved on

the poem accumulates its clarity

its imprecisions

decision:

lift my foot

in march

out the snow

fresh fallen

set it down in april

when the flow

resumes

it is

enough

i would be

done

with all this

dying

would wake my friends

from

their dreadful sleeps of

false

reason

reason enough to mourn

reason enough to rail against a world

no use getting hung up on a word

no use not speaking

say it

& then

(moving this very spring

north to Warren Road

above Russell’s Hill & Poplar Plains

above the port that Daven named

the ford where St George laid his bed

hoping to woo St Clair there

she lies north of me instead

impervious to his need

between Poplar Plains & Russell’s Hill

some evidence of war &

wha...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Map
• Blue Bluer Bloor
• Title
• Epigraph
• Title With Info
• Letter
• Dedication
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8
• 9
• 10
• 11
• 12