ΤΕΣΣΕΡΙΣ ΚΑΝΑΔΟΙ ΠΟΙΗΤΕΣ

 ΤΕΣΣΕΡΙΣ ΚΑΝΑΔΟΙ ΠΟΙΗΤΕΣ

 Θαυμάσιο φιλμάκι κινούμενων σχεδίων

του 1977. "Εικονογραφεί" τα ποιήματα

που διαβάζουν τέσσερις καταξιωμένοι

Καναδοί ποιητές, ανάμεσα στους οποίους

και ο τραγουδοποιός Λέοναρντ Κοέν.

1.John Robert Colombo

 Riverdale Lion

Bound lion, almost blind from meeting their gaze and popcorn

the Saturday kids love you. It is their parents

who would paint your mane with polkadots to match their California shirts

and would trim your nails for tie clips.

Your few roars delight them. But they wish you would quicken your pace

and not disappear so often into your artificial cave

for there they think you partake of secret joys and race

through the jungle-green lair of memory

under an African sun as gold as your mane.

But you fool them. You merely suffer the heat and scatter the flies

with your tail. You never saw Africa.

The sign does not tell them that you were born here, in captivity,

that you are as much a Canadian as they are.

2.Leonard Cohen

A Kite is a Victim

A kite is a victim you are sure of.
You love it because it pulls
gentle enough to call you master, strong enough to call you fool;
because it lives like a desperate trained falcon in the high sweet air
and you can always haul it down to tame it in your drawer.

A kite is a fish you have already caught in a pool where no fish come,
so you play him carefully and long, and hope he won't give up, or the wind die down.
A kite is the last poem you've written, so you give it to the wind, but you don't let it go
until someone finds you something else to do.

A kite is a contract of glory that must be made with the sun, so you make friends with the field the river and the wind, then you pray the whole cold night before, under the travelling cordless moon, to make you worthy and lyric and pure.

3.James Reaney 

Klaxon

All day cars mooed and shrieked,
Hollered and bellowed and wept
Upon the road.
They slid by with bits of fur attached,
Fox-tails and rabbit-legs,
The skulls and horns of deer,
Cars with yellow spectacles
Or motorcycle monocle,
Cars whose gold eyes burnt
With a too-rich battery,
Murderous cars and manslaughter cars,
Chariots from whose foreheads leapt
Silver women of ardent bosom.
Ownerless, passengerless, driverless,
They came to anyone
And with headlights full of tears
Begged for a master,
For someone to drive them
For the familiar chauffeur.
Limousines covered with pink slime
Of children’s blood
Turned into the open fields
And fell over into ditches,
The wheels kicking helplessly.
Taxis begged trees to step inside
Automobiles begged of posts
The whereabouts of their mother.
But no one wished to own them anymore,
Everyone wished to walk.

 
4. George Johnston

"The Bulge" 

Nobody knows what's growing in Bridget.
Nobody knows whose is.
What's more, maybe a beauty queen
Maybe a midget, maybe a braided bull to stand by the door
Lovely full Bridget
Her eyes are figs;
Her belly's an ocean heaving with fish;
Her hair's a barn yard with chickens and pigs;
Her outside is a banquet;
Her tongue is a dish.

Something enormous is bulging in Bridget:
A milkman, a postman, a sugar stick, a slop,
An old maid, a bad maid, a dull head, a fidget.
Multple sweet Bridget,
What will she draw?