I deliver and consign these parcels to my friends:
though we've never met,
I borrow loved attachments when I bring them.
To the young woman who fled her village in the foothills
just in time,
I bring the wish that she find here
something as reassuring
as the shoulders of her grey-blue mountains.
To the young man from across the continent
whose home rides low to the gunnels
over scarce glimmerings of cod,
I bring the hope that he will find here
undercurrents of regard which cannot be depleted.
To an aging widow,
not yet rid of raging needs,
I bring mail-order nostalgia
—intimate gifts of remembrance
from a member of the family of humankind,
paid a wage to ship her the monthly token.
To the old gentleman,
living well-groomed and clean
at the top of a crumbling tenement,
—a prison he rarely escapes,
for his hips are jerry-rigged with pins
—to him I bring the feathers torn and fallen to the pavement
from the pigeons roosting at his window.
To the woman in the long dress
that falls like slow rain along her slender frame,
I bring the reddest roses
that have ever glowed through my skin.
To the small, frail woman behind an apartment door,
her Canton lilt my only contact;
and whose feet I do not see
but whose wings I know to have been bound at birth,
I leave the thudding of my large boots
as I return to the elevator,
distant enough that she can safely unlock the door
and retrieve the parcel I have left.
To the young man who opens his rooming-house door
with a caution beyond his years,
I bring an evasive eye
and a disinterested voice;
for I can think of nothing better
to give a man whose own eye and voice
are his closest critic and furthest friend.
To the Quebecoise, the haute cuisine of her restaurant
having been too high for us, and strange,
I bring regrets at the separation,
should she move, as planned, to Montreal
to cater Asian snacks to children of the separatists
To a family from Viet Nam,
whose faces like a candle's glow enclose the parcel from home,
I bring my messenger's part in the conspiracy
to prove that Viet Nam
—for all the bombing, the burnings by napalm,
the deforestations, the defenestrations
through America's window of opportunity—
that Viet Nam will still be ten times more beautiful.
To the former owner of a packing plant,
purveyor of live and dead meat
—dead, sectioned and frozen
or live on ice, skating,
I bring, as quick as I can—glad to be rid of it—
a package filled with rancid fish.
To the man who meets me at the rooming-house front door,
swearing that the parcel is his, though he lacks I.D.,
and finally that, though his room is not the right one,
he once occupied the right one:
to him I bring no parcel;
but, knowing of his hunger,
and this being Christmas,
I try to cheer him with the news that this year
even the rich are eating rancid food.
To the newest residents near Giovanni Caboto Park,
I bring imaginings of ancient voyages by sea,
embarkations from Lisbon, Naples or La Rochelle.
No matter the number who've gone before,
each is a voyage of discovery;
the oldest things are new.
On debarcation every immigrant
must quarantine whatever rages in the blood from childhood.
Though born here, though many times inoculated
against congenital dreaming,
I, too, still harbour this infirmity.
Over threshholds I pass parcels from new embarkation ports:
Macau, Sarajevo, Bucharest and Warsaw.
In return I grab my Christmas booty,
borrowed memories, a second-hand relief
at leaving behind, at long last, the hidden vestiges of feudalism.
In the late afternoon sun the snow in the park
is the colour of sea-town walls,
and the leaf-bare trees leave shadows
like sun dials, tracing through time the root and branch
of cognate languages, cognate politics, cognate lives.
To a tiny colony of Buddhist monks
now settled in a disused, clapboard Baptist church,
I bring packages of incense from the south of India.
It has a sweetness rare for winter parkland,
but the shy smile burning from the young monk's face
is more subtle.
To the military surplus store,
along with a case of imported shells
I bring my wonderment at others' wonderment
at rusted bayonets, camouflage apparel,
medals to commemorate consummate killings,
and all the guns:
the strangely dignified ones the Great War rifles
carried by whole cities of men
like lemmings to the trenches.
Now sons follow fathers
wandering through these stacks of weapons,
boys frantic with excitement
and men glazed with contentment.
To a little girl I bring a parcel
large enough to be a sister.
I walk away and lose the girl's delight,
I lose the sister, I lose a daughter.
To a small boy I bring a parcel
large enough to be a father,
though I see from disused labels
that the packing case once held rifles.
To the doctor's wife
whom I chime from an afternoon shower,
her boredom and bemused awareness
steaming through her bathrobe
while I fumble with the signing form and payment
—for hers is a parcel expected, ordered and invoiced—
to her I bring another, involuntary gift:
one she sees through.
Though I busy myself with paper work and don't look up,
I know that her eyes are thanking me.
To the angry man I work with,
who returned
—from a year of erudition brewed at university—
to this menial delivery,
I bring my every missort,
all the parcels misdirected from their destinations,
their presumed addresses more exclusive
and suburban than any he and I frequent.
unfinished
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