(I’m just in a Margaret Avison mood all of a sudden, for whatever reason. For those not familiar with her work, she was a Canadian poet, whose Christian faith was a powerful force in her poetry. She died last July at the age of 89, having been lauded as one of Canada’s national treasures; the Globe and Mail rightly called her contribution to Canadian literature “incalculable.” This poem is the title piece of her second collection, which was the first one published after her conversion to Christianity in 1963. It seems an appropriate piece for the Easter season.)
The DumbfoundingWhen you walked here,
took skin, muscle, hair,
eyes, larynx, we
withheld all honor: “His house is clay,
how can he tell us of his far country?”Your not familiar pace
in flesh, across the waves,
woke only our distrust.
Twice-torn we cried “A ghost”
and only on our planks counted you fast.Dust wet with your spittle
cleared mortal trouble.
We called you a blasphemer,
a devil-tamer.The evening you spoke of going away
we could not stay.
All legions massed. You had to wash, and rise,
alone, and face
out of the light, for us.You died.
We said,
“The worst is true, our bliss
has come to this.”When you were seen by men
in holy flesh again
we hoped so despairingly for such report
we closed their windpipes for it.Now you have sought
and seek, in all our ways, all thoughts,
streets, musics—and we make of these a din
trying to lock you out, or in,
to be intent. And dying.Yet you are
constant and sure,
the all-lovely, all-men’s way
to that far country.Winning one, you again
all ways would begin
life: to make new
flesh, to empower
the weak in nature
to restore
or stay the sufferer;lead through the garden to
trash, rubble, hill,
where, the outcast’s outcast, you
sound dark’s uttermost, strangely light-brimming, until
time be full.