Cover Page 1
PAUL CAMERON BROWN
Whispers
Copyright © 1977 by Paul Cameron Brown
All rights reserved
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Cover Page 2
Paul Cameron Brown was born in London, England in 1948.
Moving to Canada, he grew up in Kingston before
attending high school in the southern community of Chatham.
He spent five years at University of Western
Ontario in London with summers interspersed between
work and travel. The early seventies saw trips to Europe,
the West and Mexico.
Currently teaching high school in Brampton, his poems
have appeared in Quarry, Nebula, Boreal, Northern
Journey, Stuffed Crocodile, Tightrope, as well as
a number of anthologies in the U.S.
"... One can instantly sense the private and resonant landscape
in the delicate nature... exciting water colour, a true painter of words."
Joe Rosenblatt
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ISBN: 0-88823-002-8
Published by
Three Trees Press
P.O.Box 70, Postal Station "V"
Toronto M6R 3A4
Canada
PAUL CAMERON BROWN
Whispers
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FOREWORD
Paul Brown has a carborundum eye for the most
extreme poetic minutia at a time when most of the
younger poets indulge in introspective rhetoric, dulling
that faint minority of poem tasters. However, in
Brown's case one can instantly sense the private and
resonant landscape in the delicate - nature and
anthro-pomorphic poems, radiant creations - exciting water
colour, a true painter of words.
The Three Trees Press should be congratulated for
their poetic efforts in publishing Whispers, a splendid
Volume.
Joe Rosenblatt
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CONTENTS
RAIN FILM
9 UNDULATE, MY TONGUE
10 RAIN FILM
11 ISLES AND RIVULETS
12 SEAWARD
13 MALINGERING
14 VOYAGE
15 CHRYSALIS
16 THE BELLS
17 THE WORLD OF DYING LOVE
WHISPERS
19 DARKENING GREEN
20 WHISPERS
21 TRESPASS
22 FOREST SPITTLE
23 SEAGULLS
24 LA DOUCE MER
25 GOURDS
26 RESIGNATION
27 THE BREATH OF CANDLES
28 GREEN EYE SHIELDS
29 INVESTITURE
30 THE SPOKEN WORD
TESTIMONY
32 SMEARS
33 TESTIMONY
34 FORTRESS SNOW
35 CIENFUEGOS
36 DEVASTATION
37 BEE AN APPLE
38 EMPTINESS
39 CLAWS
40 MOON DARK WORLD
41 THE ELYSIAN FIELDS
42 BARBARY WHITE
THE BURNING
44 PENCIL SKETCHES
45 EMPTY WARRIORS
46 THE KEEPER OF THE JEWEL
47 ROWING WITH CRAYONS
48 COLLUSIONS
49 GOSSAMER THREADS
50 A FACE
51 THE BURNING
THE GATHERING OF DEAD WOOD
53 GREEN ANGELLIGHTS
54 EYES INSIDE
55 THE HYDASPES
56 SLEIGH BELLS
57 ORIFICE
58 PECULIAR MORNING
59 W H E R E
60 THE TREASURE SHIPS
61 HANNIBAL
62 THE GATHERING OF DEAD WOOD
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UNDULATE, MY TONGUE
My tongue undulates, a wave to shore,
knocks a vigorous reef,
then slides to sea once more.
The coral pink horizon of the mouth,
cavernous shores,
my tongue laps pier white teeth
in servitude like an oar.
Heavy drifting, bobbing as a buoy,
the tongue sinks slowly down before
surprising saliva
going ashore.
9
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RAIN FILM
On the night of the rains,
water was oozing out from
the sky's swollen stitches,
a rash developed across
the meaning of the heavens.
The wooden floors of my attic place
strove for a deeper tone,
a hoarse calling
grew louder as I paced
trying to see rain.
I followed the gravity of the treasure hunt
where each bounce meant a slap
across a table top of tension,
where the window basted winter black rain
and silence paid another call.
I am as much as this water flower, rain.
I am as impressionable as the city that stops for rain.
And I lack the same substance that dooms water to be
a soft pillow feather; excepting this,
I may still shatter this thing, March routine existence
by dabbling in destruction.
10
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ISLES AND RIVULETS
On your brow, the steppes of Asia
are fetched by deep set eyes
A colouring distict with mystery
perceives the Polos greeting the Great Khan,
the golden isle of Ciphangu, the sultry east.
I revel in the mystery
of my warm, wet flower.
A pollen bee laden with honey
squirms, embraces with me,
in the abrupt opening of our jar,
serrated edge of the known world.
The air, buoyed and elastic with pleasure, belongs to me.
Tawny, pale rose, your oriental skin
peels back
the tiny veils separating our cultures.
I peer in to find Confucian
lilac, towers of silence,
opal pheasants.
Harmony strains all dogmas.
Rain darts penetrate the gathering pools.
The tiny plastic cup
my life,
inseparable from your hand.
11
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SEAWARD
Whirl of patterned images,
deep seascape painting
hovering,
rustle, chokecherry
grown in
dark pigmented
stunted cove - animal
growl of pilotless sea,
metallic twinkle of sun
bright, stealing
bitter white
all bird life
rockward;
traces skimming
the intrusion
of pebbly shore,
autumnal night.
12
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MALINGERING
Malingering,
increase drift
of censure
infrared blotted one.
No noise, just
the splashing of the sea
endless, shrill
birds
gaping a way
into the night's chill.
13
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VOYAGE
The mystique of the sea,
where waves act as snares,
hang boughs over wet
blackness wherever winds
die driven ashore.
Melancholy vastness-its pleasure
the dim lights swallowed
in glutton happiness
the further I search
the sea.
14
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CHRYSALIS
Fury of chrysalis, or crepuscular caterpillar's roosting nest,
Fidgeting cocoon dry in annoyance and the reptile caress
Of empty sound.
See it near the trestle,
Above broad November leaves,
Before winter's closing eye.
Comatose pupa, infringing
In dormancy well primed,
And charged with action
Its focus, brittle reality,
Distant life unaware around even itself.
Waiting, the syringe filled ecstasy is
Barest of autistic treasure
Satiate, 'til spilled and
Molten over toughened silken hide,
The outer dormitory
Hustles to rejoin
Compost spring
Controlling a tidy, energy world.
15
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THE BELLS
The dangling of bells
...amid faint tingling,
the inspirational nature of their lies
between each peal.
Classical repertoire, then dryness.
Heavy swelter, the green ore
iron casting of the golden bell
clangs into the night.
Its dash against dry stone
a special brand of hideousness.
Naked madness,
the jangle of the noise
torn from the throat of night,
tucked between the rage of sightless villagers;
their torn members
toys of plastic
wedged obscene within the dash of withered bells.
16
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THE WORLD OF DYING LOVE
The long finger of blackness is holding its head for us.
Dingy bue is its shade,
comatose in movement, hazarding a slow swiftness,
it inches toward us.
Relief comes fitfully.
The dragon alone, an upstart
crowned with drunken spending,
has horse colours as ribbons with his eyes.
It cradles a breast of trembling bone.
Misercorde, Misercorde.
I dreamt I saw skeletal slackness
dangling;
the poverty of touch is a casket
with love in rumbling sockets.
Craziness is the passion of the engulfed,
dribbling pleasantly.
Presentations extended beyond and into themselves.
Slackness schemes with invalid awareness
in a brothel of hope.
17
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Part II
WHISPERS
DARKENING GREEN
My mind, rarely with me alone,
parts with energy,
the floor boards scuffed
and landing beams just
roosts big enough for pigeons
on leave from fields
darker for their grain.
19
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WHISPERS
Suppose and this is just supposing,
though it is a supposition of the highest order,
I were to die tomorrow
A roar denoting silence?
At work, if tradition is the dictate,
something eulogistic would find itself being said.
I am more calm.
I perceive their layers more shrilly.
Past the lipservice
and shocked surprise,
whispers, rumours and
the grapevine would bruit
around a different legacy.
And the open bier?
An embrassassment.
What more could be left unsaid?
20
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TRESPASS
I would imagine
the eyelids fail,
fall closed, shut,
as icicles sit
on porch doors
where old nails rust.
21
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FOREST SPITTLE
The preciseness of that little moment,
bowler eyes in hot, top rays
effervescent through
spongy forest gloom,
the wet of the happy
unreconciled with the dry outside.
22
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SEAGULLS
I see many thoughts from a window.
Seagulls in the fashion of summer
and leaves as they quit the year.
Sense impressions, if they are this,
are only images
of what we refuse to follow.
23
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LA DOUCE MER
Too greedy hormonal levels,
savouring drives and swooned walrus tusks
behind the deep belly
of tireless sea,
propel ocean crates
looser for their water
than blood
to devour cavernous shores,
swilling miniature inland
sweet water seas that
father Champlain called
douce mer lakes;
dubbing there a blow for courage.
24
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GOURDS
A cemetery overgrown
such that each tombstone is a pauper fungus
crowded, dark with leaves,
or hollow gourds hideous,
in a forest sleep.
25
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RESIGNATION
Petals that fall into a woodland pool
are servers at a banquet.
Each one dresses for the occasion
like an employee with regrets,
that leaves the house in a somber mood
the morning after his resignation.
26
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THE BREATH OF CANDLES
The breath of candles,
hot and murky,
on the still air.
Giant factories wave wands
in luxury;
contaminate roving commuter bands
brown, from dirt knitted through white bread hair.
27
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GREEN EYE SHIELDS
I have stars drying in my eyes.
Heavy seas, in wind.
They have sealed me from the heavy
dragging sockets, otherwise my green eye shields.
I have scars all over my eyes,
to bear the horrible imaginings
that try to come through.
The horror of being alive.
The crusty scenes that pry into trees
glide down, touch me,
a glitter of awful gold steals me,
in its triumph of glow.
28
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INVESTITURE
Our nights have cruel eyes
And have cast us about too thinly,
Fallen upon us,
Divested the attention of the wind.
Night comes to develop us,
Will polish our minds with
A precision lasting 'til daybreak.
Its damp coolness peaks with wretched effect.
Autumnal decay
Whereby the slow process of vegetation
Displeases the nostril,
Is but a preamble to greater violence
Leading tepid legislation in an orchestra
Toward greater effect.
The thin harmony of our lives
Positions no alarms whereby
We might use them.
The fabric mixture of existence, nothing but investiture,
Props to heighten necessary lies,
Strains at extinction,
The volcanic instrument life itself.
Goals are these same vehicles
To operate weak desires.
Frustration defeats a goal
That will not fit.
29
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THE SPOKEN WORD
I touch your
face - where strands of whispery hair
dangle your thoughtful gaze through mine.
Clutching,
all the words not said
lie pale and broken
beneath forgery lies.
Eyes, our facial minnows, the mirror
images, flash too brightly
out of the shallows,
out of their stony commitments
towards believing
we cannot agree.
30
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