The Mountain That Watched

“IN the beginning” ... “The heavens and the earth” ... “Let there be light” ... After all we can’t improve on Genesis After all we can’t improve on Genesis For the condensed beginning of a tale! But earth is much more earth, and heaven much more heaven When it’s our own old Mountain, touching sky Like this, right up in the middle of the island, Than when it’s a mountain range across the oceans. That’s to my way of thinking anyhow. Mountain and city ... Edinburgh now ... but that’s another’s story ... Sonnet form! And now ... to mine, to-day. To-day! To-day is written in curling smoke Before the Mountain, dumb above the city ... Our Mountain ... trying to make us understand, By secret code, sign language ... what you will. Rustling of leaves— Pale green, dark amber, scarlet, crimsoning brown— Deep coloured sighs and long deep breaths of earth— Rustling of leaves— “In the beginning”— The river, the island, and the rustling leaves, Arrows and mating and life and birth and death, Silence and solitude; But always the Mountain, touching cold blue sky When the white men landed in their little boats, When holy dreaming men and women came, And built their funny little forts and towers, And sacred shrines, And made a new-world city. And all the while the Mountain watched and watched. Dirt? Well you certainly can’t expect a city’s docks, or a great station at an entrance port, to be like a Quaker meeting-house on a seventh-day noon. Docks! There’s a magical word! Not unpoetical let me tell you, if you’ll only close your eyes and use that “inward eye” your Wordsworth used for daffodils. My God! you’d think he had secured that “eye” to be hereafter used for “daffodils,” and “solitude” and “thrills,” exclusively! Come now! Just try it on for once to-day with river docks filled with the motley throng ... old world and new. Deep searching eyes that seek the “golden West”— wild eyes that hold the primal hunger lure, young eyes that hold the secrets of the dawn, sad eyes that hold the fury of the night— We’ll have to stand the dirty docks I think, and the crowded station— holding a daffodil to your nose to smell you’ll soon forget the nose and the daffodil! What’s that you’re murmuring? “It’s all like a magic casement opening out on perilous seas....” Bless you for those kind words! Though that’s John Keats that sees our docks—not you! Wait just a moment—here is something now that’s well worth watching! It’s the Jewish New Year, and those are orthodox Jews who have come down to cast their sins away in running water. Mumbling in their beards ... from books, and some from memory ... punctilious enough they are ... shaking their overcoats ... (those two men, look!) Into deep river ... old Father St. Lawrence running to the sea. Old men, believers—and a few young ones too. You see? Turn round and look at the motor cars. Look at that old old woman from the slums— Grandmother of Isaac and Jacob and Abraham— Look at her! Carefully shake, shake, shake, old Mother! Strong, wrinkled, kindly face—those toil-worn hands— Come, let us try the “inward eye” again.... Verily—see! Her sins do drop and float away from her on the dirty oily water—little sins that float like tiny, bright-red maple leaves cast from a lusty old tree in the Fall. She’s known the life of the full ripe seasons through ... carefully and punctiliously shake, shake, shake! Let us go too from the docks with lightened hearts, groping our way on upward through the slums. Listen to the lilt and whimsical chattering of alien tongues. “And have not charity”—“Through a glass darkly” ... see? We’ve dropped our classic daffodils and trod upon them! But we’ve really seen—something. To-day. What else does the Mountain see? Churches! Hotels! Domes, palaces and towers, Steep hilly streets, shops, hovels, factories. Limestone tradition! Romance! Romance! Raw gold! Merry-men, jesters, in a surging crowd mingling with Holy Folk— Miracles, shrines, and glorious, honest doubts— raw gold, black, red,— new thoughts breed sacraments— white dreams and tawny sins— the half-good, the half-bad—Humanity! Groping humanity— Who judges? How? Or why? The Mountain watches. Snow-dusted silent streets. The midnight mass— with quiet thronging worshippers that pass from darkness into glimmering ecstasies.— Another mood ... The blizzard— The swirling wall-like drifts, while through the streets the snow-ploughs move like huge primeval beasts glutted with power; wallowing through the mists of drifting powdery particles, ploughing the snow. The Mountain watches and possesses now a festival afternoon of sparkling white, pierced by the thrilling flights of vivid glancing skis— pierced by the shooting downward in death-like dive, of flat toboggans on the mountain slide. Impertinence the Mountain tolerates! The flashing facets of an ice palace reared in a square beside a towering church of massive stone, for half a continent to gaze upon if it so desires, and feast between whiles. (“H-mmm—Good advertising this— Hush! Watch your step! Deliver the goods!”) Ah well—Mount Royal, graven on a “souvenir!” The Mountain watches. “Truly an ice palace is a beautiful thing—a fairy tale!” “You poets are so fantastic!” “You should worry!” “My word I’m nearly dead for tea!” “Do hurry!” “Ice plants for making artificial ice”—“Efficiency”— “Gold seal—good jazz” “The cafeterias are the thing to-day— take up your tray and walk!” “What blasphemy!” “Ice plants for making artificial ice” “Fine bargain furs there if you’ve got the price” “Gods! what a day!” Then much the same in French—the rapid glancing tongue. “Day uttereth speech” indeed. “Night sheweth knowledge.” The Mountain watches. Night! Zero night— like a dense black velvet skin drawn tightly over the city; and lights pricking, pricking, pricking— like fiery pin-points in a million eyes behind black skins, blazing with jungle light ... a gay old city is sinister at night. Rustling and creaking of black naked branches On the old Mountain— Stark twisted branches black against the snow Snapping and crackling of frost-tortured trees— Rustling— Something has happened! The Mountain almost seems to tremble. Down its sides rush the melting snows in torrents; tumbling, tumultuous, most untidy rivers through icy blackened parapets that still stand. Washing day for the Mountain! Ah but wait!— Silver-green city in a rosy mist—Spring dawn!— As Life has waked with a soft stirring Of pouting leafy lips And curling velvet finger-tips, Through all the ages while the Mountain watched. Rustling of leaves— Silver-green, rose-red, amber, scarlet, brown— Deep coloured sighs and long deep breaths of earth— Rustling of leaves— Against my hand a little crumbling dust Is softly blown— Before my eyes a glory—sunset? Dawn? And in my ears a great triumphant song— Is it a song? Or but the quiet breathing of a child Who holds its coloured toys and drifts to sleep? The Mountain watches and is very still.

THROUGH tortured weeks of hospital surgery The old fruit garden of my childhood days Grew close about me. Through black storms of pain Swayed joyous boughs of rosy apple-bloom; White blossomed branches of an old plum-tree; Old grape-vines clinging to a sunny wall; Great bushes of red currants and raspberries. Through hours of torturing thirst I found again That old fruit garden—as if body and soul Clutched at cool juicy fruits—remembering— Devouring them through a parched mouth of the brain.

Grandfather was so courtly, wise and calm: At times a sweet old wordling, dealing balm Through business phrase or words of ancient psalm, Justice and whimsical kindliness to all. As he watched mankind, so in early Fall, He watched his grape-vines on the stable wall. In old Quebec the season is too brief To ripen grapes well ... sometimes scarlet leaf Becomes a herald swift beyond belief. The few big clusters with pale purple bloom So slowly deepening, often met their doom When rich October caught November’s gloom. He never lost his interest ... every Fall He saw his grape-vines as he’d dreamed them, all Weighed down with purple riches, growing tall Over the stable windows. On the way To the rose garden where he walked each day ... “These grapes are riper than last year” he’d say. In spite of all the travelling he’d done He sought no changes now and thought “no sun Could be much brighter than a Canadian one!” Yet I knew well his grapes brought visions fair Of mellow summer lands with temperate air. “Grapes are like men—can’t ripen everywhere.... Men all need sun, and right loam I suppose; But if one strikes deep roots ... as a rule ... he grows!” He smiled his smile and cut a late white rose.

“Well! The red currants must be picked to-day. They’re ready for jelly” Grandmother would say. She never wasted words yet had her way. In cool gray cotton gown, and black straw hat Securely tied—She made a point of that Though no breeze stirred the lilacs where she sat To superintend old Jock and Marie Anne At tasks of picking. When her palm-leaf fan Waved slowly all was well; but my blood ran Quicker when it moved very fast ... one knew The hours were slipping past ... then old Jock too And Marie Anne, would pick with greater zest. “Granny! Red currant jelly’s much the best!” “Black’s best for colds” she’d say, as she caressed With firm kind fingers my rough curly head. She rarely kissed me. Deep within was bred Acid reserve and purity ... those red Ripe currants, with their pleasant acid tang, Seemed to me just like Grandmother! I sang My multiplication-tables till they rang Loud through the garden where dear Granny sat Smiling—well-pleased—with firmly-tied black hat!

Old Jock and Marie Anne could never find Raspberries of the glowing amber kind To fill the “ancient porcelain bowl.” (’Twas lined With amber glaze; outside a gold vine wound In such a graceful pattern round and round.) But if my Mother looked she always found Enough to fill the bowl. That day we’d three Distinguished guests. I loved to have them see My lovely Mother as she looked at tea.... Her gown of creamy lace—her shining hair, Her beads of old carved amber ... all her rare Fragile soft richness, like the berries there With their pale amber bloom. I loved her so.... I wished that every body there could know.... “Why don’t you eat your berries, Child?” ... then low I bent my head to hide two burning tears Of yearning love. How strange those vague cold fears My child heart knew that day ... what long long years Since those last lovely hours of ecstasy When she made Beauty live and thrill for me.