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From the archives

A Strange Road to Hell

Technology, culture and the march to World War One

Lax Americana

What happens if Donald Trump returns to the White House?

Gardens of Mourning

The vast, idealistic effort to bury World War One's fallen soldiers

Answering Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus

 

Sadness of all life, life of all sadness —

pouring death into fourteen lines,

you poured it well, smooth and steady,

twisting just so to catch the drip.

 

But I pity your ecstatic butterfly —

clutched in the grip of some poetic hiccough,

arrested flutter of the diaphragm.

 

I pity your fountain mouth,

your sleeping ear,

your blackened, aging chin.

 

And I pity your monuments,

so lonely, so unerected.

 

I pity the lyre — its indefinite,

soundless echo. Its player:

 

tired fingers, tired eyes,

nothing more to look back for,

yet the song goes on.

 

David Huebert works, lives and writes in Halifax. His poetry and fiction have appeared in journals such as Event, Matrix, Existere, Vallum and The Antigonish Review.

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