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From the archives

Object Lessons

Lisa Alward’s debut collection

The Other Side of “Irish Eyes”

Brian Mulroney abroad and at home

But Is It Trash?

Evaluating art in the age of conspicuous consumption

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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