Gaspé to Ottowa Poem by Eithne Strong

That was Wednesday and after days
we were coming back,
the evening sending up its warmed haze.
On our right a track,

a brittle sweep of acceptable gold,
the sun across that river
wide as a sea. I, queerly sad,
felt, improbably, a leaving. Goodbye river.

Vast, old, so old; it said what it said:
I would have liked a long flow
of the impossible - our driver sped -
to know what, to know.

Our driver sped. I was thinking
- illogical knife - Is it the last time
for this and this - you sleeping -
the last time?

And then your sleeping was a threat.
Unimpressed, but plainly vulnerable you were,
not having been able to simulate
a constitution remaining in interested gear.

Drained by such persistent panorama,
you did not see nor care
that we were coming back this different way
with, on our right, the splendid water.

Following us always on the left, repeated flight
of silver things, flashing an imaginable history -
silo towers, thin spires, new roofs - their light
the aluminium glint of Canada.

Its dark force of northern heights was cobwebbed later
and queerly sad. The river had said
what it said. I, remembering now, know nothing better:
not this nor this . .. and now you are dead.