1 Judith P. Robertson, Geographies of My Imagination: Poems. Unpublished manuscript. September 2013.
Geographies of My Imagination: Poems Judith P. Robertson Table of Contents Islands % High Tide in the Garden % Love on the Southern Shore % Mermaid Passing Through % Planting Out Peas % Doubt No More the Dogberry % Making Jam Mainlands % The Garden at Charleston % Lightning Over Bloor % Time Passing % Cinderella: A Blue Collar Fairytale % I Sing the Poet Electric Spice Routes Voleure dans la Chambre de Picasso % Blue Chagall % Orange Morocco % Post Script: Virginia to Vita % Delacroix in Tangier % The Red Sea % The Paradox of Whales SONG TO THE TABEBUIA CARAIBA TREE WHOSE BARK GIVES US TEA AND QUININE % About the Author About the Poems
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HIGH TIDE IN THE GARDEN Coming here from away She found the elsewhere that had kept her hungry (Like a sorrow that can strangle you Like something you can’t live without Like something you crawl into: a second skin.) Coming here from away She made her garden of green fury Conceived in impetuous desire And pitched against flint of sea and sky. Then for thirteen moons Coming here from away She threw rocks and found horseshoes Fallen long ago from nails big enough to bear weight Turning up like magic things in the soil, And slowly she limbered free. Coming here from away From a life of high romanticism And rigid performances, it was here In the bellow blow and varied beat Of a different lectern That she learned to take new measure: Of how metal is made malleable And less likely to fracture When you can slacken up to anvil and take the heat Of a whole new world in counterpoint.
LOVE ON THE SOUTHERN SHORE Three years ago I brought you to this place Intent on making it our own. Who’d want it, you said, who’d live here, All year round, this god-forsaken stretch Of dampened misery? And so I took you to my bed to school you In songs of ancient, one-word syllables: Fog, wind, rock, rain,
3 Judith P. Robertson, Geographies of My Imagination: Poems. Unpublished manuscript. September 2013.
Love, sea, you, me, Letting the words roll off my tongue In time for my tongue to roll off you. And sure in time you learned to love The signs of our new alphabet Forged in a one beat rune Of ancient syllabary, deep and good Of skin and mouth and rhyme.
MERMAID PASSING THROUGH Hardly a day passes I don’t think of her Younger than I am now, Luminous and bearing down On the wet viscosity of my imagination. The look of her, smell of her, sound of her, Sixty-three words turned to minutes In Paris, an anthem to bodies Gathering knowledge like the Seine.
PLANTING OUT PEAS In that summer of gray northern light When fog settled like uncertainty over the barrens And for days the sun hung black She decided to plant out peas Setting feathers, shells, and a tuft of fur Into the undergrowth Before thrice chanting a spell Once heard in her grandmother’s garden: May your green fuse burn bright, In emerald delight And that thought filling immensity. Now it takes a fair almanac To plant out peas in bad weather: A grammatology of straight stakes, long string, A prayer for sunshine and a few good bees; And against sure assault of lightning, Bad wind and slow worms,
4 Even these bespeak frail countenance…. Remember that princeliest of creeping creatures all Helix Nemoralis, the garden’s great horned snail Whose ancient back bears Mendelian memory Of dominance and segregation And whose even seven thousand teeth Set in a soft-ringed vortex spiraling through viridian Leave salt trails where tendrils once grew? And so the gardener must be prodigal in her illusions Planting out peas in a trellis of unblemished dreams Whilst tending her well anchored harvest With luxurious images and names Like Mammoth Melting Sugar, and Little Marvel, Early Onward, and Feltham First, And populating each night’s sleep with phantasmagorias Of green shoots and emerald in a crown of shining leaves.
DOUBT NO MORE THE DOGBERRY Doubt no more the Dogberry whose crimson fruit And soft forked stem harbor for those en route Merry enchantments, like dousing rods minute, And divination sticks, faithful staves and wands, And in whose every berry a five-point star commands A pentagram to bar against your hand All beings undeserving of admission. Doubt no more the Dogberry, known in superstition As Quickbane, Delight of the Eye, Witchbane, Round tree, Witchwood, Quickbeam, and Rune. Never doubt a tree in whose healthy womb Reside berries for wine, even whilst, importuned By cause of heavy fruit or pale leaves It proclaims a prophecy of illness or grief, Or hard winter. Doubt no more nor disbelieve This tree whose ancient secrets hold such splendid bait For birds in winter, and whose whispering freight Of brilliant orange and red keep sorcery at the gate.
5 Judith P. Robertson, Geographies of My Imagination: Poems. Unpublished manuscript. September 2013.
MAKING JAM Emily Bronte’s making jam: Water sloshes over her blue colander Full to the brim with plump blood-shapes from the riverbank Berry juice spilling across the floor. When it’s done she’ll visit Charlotte Then, if she has to, face her desk. I’m striding through the garden in my wellingtons Black cap drawn tight over my eyes And sunglasses minting gold from the fog Perhaps I should sit on a rock and write a poem It may not come out as I intend.
THE GARDEN AT CHARLESTON Now when I walk around at lunchtime Leaving the Arabian Tent and sweet hours with Olivia I have Frank O’Hara at my side His low slung trousers harnessing wind from my syllables, And forcing me headlong into a maelstrom Of cow parsley and thyme, yellow flags and lavender, And tentacles of green ivy lacing their way Through the umber muck of an ancient pond. It’s twelve o’clock and they’ve assembled— My stalwart muses all these blessed years. Here’s Duncan with a red tea towel over his head And Lytton’s sinewy hands fingering red beard And Virginia—her Room of One’s Own Shouldering its way through water lilies the size of dinner plates. I see pots of geraniums standing like sentinels in clay And I think of Angelica—Deceived by Kindness— And, Oh God… I wish she were here. …She may be, of course. Isn’t that her…standing in the right hand corner (you can see her smiling) Of Annie Liebowitz’s mercurial portrait sequence Of the Garden at Charleston?
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LIGHTNING OVER BLOOR We had taken our places at the table For some words after the break, following On various comings and goings. And when—twice—the professor said, “hope,” The celestial fireworks following the verb Had us rocketing skywards too. I had always suspected The poet’s powerful leanings, but now I reckoned How few exchanges we had actually come to know Between pedagogy, providence, and rain. Imagine a word inciting a rainbow Of kaleidoscopic color refracting against the sky With water heaving in at the windows and Curtains of yellow and indigo opening into Soft, new smiles on the faces of the persons assembled. But then, just as quick, lightning hit loud and fast Taking hold of the sky with furious thunder following Before funneling its undiminished charge Into a room full of hunger and purpose. I prize it, not knowing still whose soul at the sound released, May yet unfold. The seminar emptied fast upon the storm, Dispersing, anxious and radiant, At eight-thirty in the evening onto Bloor.
TIME PASSING If I could visit once again that room Where minds of youthful vigor once did gather And one more time be touched by you, in matters Great, that beat in pulse of blood or scar Of tissue… And once again if I could take back Time, and so be touched by thoughts that live Unfinished, like loss, subjection, the problem Of perception… And if good time itself could be my Gentle helpmate gathering all these stanzas Of all our months together, then would I through That lofty threshold pass? And once returned Could I the present make as not completed? It’s possible to enter darkened rooms not wanting that.
7 Judith P. Robertson, Geographies of My Imagination: Poems. Unpublished manuscript. September 2013.
Some people do. Not me, not you.
CINDERELLA: A BLUE COLLAR FAIRY TALE She was a girl who never had enough You know what I mean. Something In her longed to find the great Mother, and she leaped into OISE. It took a while, but Roger Agreed to take her in. She knew it was touch-and-go, but once Past the SSHRC, it was too late. It was OK, the Gramsci and Foucault, Buber, Kristeva, and Levinas. She viewed post-modernity As shit-load better coinage Than cleaning in the corners. But a girl has to make her own way. Maybe it was her Ode to Two Good Shoes That did her in, followed by her poem With a real frog in it. She was out. And that was it. She took the first train North To a small teaching town in Ontario Where she composed her first Tweet And texted the only mother she knew: “Let’s talk.”
APRÉS VOUS You are the archive in which I store my future The book of hours through which I measure faith I read within the pages of your countenance Contested memory’s fierce counselor and face Upon the great wide staircase of your record You greatly give yourself in what is good We lean from out your skies to capture wonder Merci, monsieur, et toujours, aprés vous.
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VOLEURE DANS LA CAMBRE DE PICASSO We’ve been down his road before, Jacqueline. No painter’s crafted my long neck or feline Gaze; I can’t recall amidst my love’s array A single instance of such sad fragility And tender strength as you depict, cross-legged On rocking chair, and obdurate, your eyebrow’s eves A perch for your great master. Unheeded Words fly all around you: “empreinte originale”, “La española”, “oleaster”, “scented, marked, and dark As a fire gutted citadel”. You stand at dusk Wash-cloth in hand (you wearing starched whites And Pablo—God forbid, naked in the bath): And I catch a whiff of how it works for you, true love Wringing a sponge over her creator’s stalwart back.
BLUE CHAGALL Unbounded by the laws of gravity You understand what pigment is: As in blue cows or tefillin As in Mozart or a mirror Set into a bouquet of life. No colour, no freedom.
ORANGE MOROCCO Meet me on the terrace Of the little cafe in the casbah And we will be Moroccans the way Matisse saw it Building our generous layers of pigment Through orange blossom and turmeric Three small goldfish and a basket of tangerines.
9 Judith P. Robertson, Geographies of My Imagination: Poems. Unpublished manuscript. September 2013.
POST SCRIPT, VIRGINIA TO VITA Come with me to the Valley of Dra'a Where we will pick dates, then sleep In a room the colour of dusty rose Beneath Berber blankets smelling of saffron And dream of Lilly Briscoe casting her diagonal beam Across silver waves to the edge of dawn.
DELACROIX IN TANGIER So tell me: When did the man In the white turban First strike you As sufficiently restless for adventure That his cerise scarf And pine green barbouches (Fingering old yellowed stone) Might anchor in blinding light Your "Jewish Wedding in Morocco"?
THE RED SEA There are places we arrive at in the world Where we dream the lives of our ancestors Navigating against prevailing currents, And sailing on with the eddy and backflow Of geography, good luck and timing. The Red Sea is a place impossible to imagine Except through the eyes of childhood. It is hard to see these broad curtains of blue parting, As in the old story, but oh, so very easy To hope for the miracle of passage.
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THE PARADOX OF WHALES Jonah, my son: the paradox of whales Is that one should arrive precisely At the hour in which you were prepared To fly overboard, in a retrograde motion Of finding fair accommodation in a fish. I understand the impulse, I do, The voices in my head telling me That any smallholding—even one at the end of a winding windpipe So black no sky could squeak through, then opening up To a bright intestinal tract situated some miles out of town, (With a bright white door and a baleen stoop Marked by clumps of seaweed)— Beats a future of dust and gravel, Limbs falling, and hungry eyes flicking in the rain.
SONG TO THE TABEBUIA CARAIBA TREE WHOSE BARK GIVES US TEA AND QUININE When Mrs. Dalloway said She would buy the flowers herself, Even in her wildest dreams, could she Have imagined transporting home to her party The lavish flourish of abundance Sounding from the depths of these trumpets?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Judith P. Robertson is a poet, wanderer, bibliophile, and painter who enjoys writing about and living between islands anywhere, any time, but especially during these present hours in Newfoundland and Longboat Key. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto (1994) and taught at the University of Ottawa for many years. Her academic work explores the inner life of reading experience and is widely published.
ABOUT THE POEMS
11 Judith P. Robertson, Geographies of My Imagination: Poems. Unpublished manuscript. September 2013.
Using poetry as a succinct yet passionate form of expression, Judith P. Robertson approaches her work as a public inventory of private experience, a glance into the way it feels to live at certain times. She aspires to bring lyrical beauty and ethical depth to her poetry, tracing the broken lines of memory, time, and change through her work, often in dialogue with geographical spaces and the famous people (mentors or their ghosts) who inhabit them. Several poems in this manuscript have been previously published.