The Land We Dreamed

Poems

Joe Survant

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780813144580
• eBook ISBN: 9780813144603
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

II

Coureurs des Bois
1638

The French had, since the year 1524, often visited the coast of America…. Finally, at the beginning of the last century [the 17^th], Samuel Champlain … entered the region of the interior. Already was the undertaking progressing very favorably, when Henry IV, more solicitous for religion than for commerce, resolved, in the year 1608, to introduce Christian rites into this part of the New World, and asked the members of the Society to undertake this Apostolic enterprise.

—Fr. Joseph Jouvency, Jesuit Relations

The land which we have gone round is very good. If the Lord be favorable, he will bring us into it…. Fear ye not the people of this land … the Lord is with us.

—Numbers 14:7

Noel Chabanel

Dieppe, 1638

I.

I saw her first

at sixteen dipping

long black braids

in the horses’ tank,

the other girls skipping

around her in a dance.

I kissed her later, and

she kissed me. When she

was seventeen, we married.

At nineteen, she

coughed up little spots

of blood, then torrents.

Fevers and night sweats

began, and a strange

flushing of her cheeks.

At twenty she was gone,

slipping through my hands

and out of nature.

In my grief’s rage

I rushed into

the hogs’ closed pen

with a sharpened sickle,

hacking furiously at

dumb huddled animals

who had no part

in my grief until

I finally slipped

in the bloody gore while

the hogs knocked against

the rails with an awful squealing.

II.

Louys put his

big butcher’s hands

hard upon me,

and I lay subdued

on the barn’s dirt floor

for a day or more,

bound against my

madness and for my

neighbors’ fear and anger.

Father Jerome came

and spoke quietly, then

slowly untied me.

He gave me wine and

bread and watched me

eat and drink. He

saw my torn clothes,

my bruised and beaten body

where Louys restrained me,

saw my slowly fading

frenzy. He watched for

a long while, then said,

Noel, come with me

to help as I rescue

souls in the Huron Missions.

I looked around and

everywhere I saw

the awful shape of her

absence in the gloomy

air and printed on my

eyes. I saw too the

dark patina of sorrow

that would be a lasting

mark of my madness.

So, I went with him

and sailed from Honfleur

across a wide and empty sea.

Father Jerome Clermont

1638

Though we sailed in May,

it was winter on the northern sea,

and our cabin so low we could not

sit or stand. Rain seeped

through and wet my frozen feet.

We ate salt food and suffered

terrible thirst. Always

our ship was tossed in a

gray and angry sea. I

remembered the luxury of

thinking of death in my cell

at Dieppe, the crucifix before me

on my wall, the sea roaring

safely outside, but on the boat

we floated in a presence

that seemed the absence of God.

One morning the ocean calmed

and we passed two ice islands

larger than our ship, shining

in the sun like crystal cathedrals.

The weather softened and we sailed

into the great St. Lawrence, wider than a sea,

and entere...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• I. The First Hunters
• II. Coureurs des Bois
• III. Ken-ta-tha
• IV. Long Hunter
• V. Voices from the Great Migration
• VI. A Codicil
• Acknowledgments
• Index of First Lines
• Kentucky Voices