work

A band of Arab brigands having taken up their position on the top of
a mountain and closed the passage of caravans, the inhabitants of
the country were distressed by their stratagems and the troops of
the sultan foiled because the robbers, having obtained an inaccessible
spot on the summit of the mountain, thus had a refuge which they
made their habitation. The chiefs of that region held a consultation
about getting rid of the calamity because it would be impossible to
offer resistance to the robbers if they were allowed to remain.

In the year eighteen seventy-six,
A Fourth of July celebration
Was held in Grand Rapids city
In honor to our nation.
The largest city in the county of Kent,
Is this city, and it is respected,
For thousands of people was here to see
The beautiful arch erected.
II
The Centennial arch on Campau Place
Was the most principal feature;
It was a grand beautiful sight
To all human sensitive creatures;
To all the people that loved to read
The mottoes on it painted,
The engravings, too, and tell

When painters leave this world, we grieve
For the hand that will work no more,
But who can say that they rest alway
On that still celestial shore?
No! No! they choose from the rainbow hues,
And winging from Paradise,
They come to paint, now bold now faint,
The tones of our sunset skies.
When I see them there I can almost swear
That grey is from Whistler's brain!
That crimson flush was Turner's brush!
And the gold is Claude Lorraine.

Cats met us at
the landing-place
reclining in the sun
to check us in
with a momentary glance,
concierges
of a grassy island.
(Attila's Throne,
the Devil's Bridge,
and "the best Byzantine
church in the world",
long saints admonitory
on kiln-like inner walls.)
And lunch in a shady court
where cats now
systematically worked
the restaurant, table
by table, gazing into eyes
pleading "I'm hungry
and I'm cute", reaching
front paws up to knees
and always getting

Here lies a bloke who's just gone West,
A Number One Australian;
He took his gun and did his best
To mitigate the alien.
So long as he could get to work
He needed no sagacity;
A German, Austrian, or Turk,
Were all the same to Cassidy.
Wherever he could raise "the stuff"
-- A liquor deleterious --
The question when he'd have enough
Was apt to be mysterious.
'Twould worry prudent folks a lot
Through mental incapacity;
If he could keep it down or not,
Was all the same to Cassidy.

The extraordinary patience of things!
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of surburban houses-
How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads-
Now the spoiler has come: does it care?
Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty

After I got religion and steadied down
They gave me a job in the canning works,
And every morning I had to fill
The tank in the yard with gasoline,
That fed the blow-fires in the sheds
To heat the soldering irons.
And I mounted a rickety ladder to do it,
Carrying buckets full of the stuff.
One morning, as I stood there pouring,
The air grew still and seemed to heave,
And I shot up as the tank exploded,
And down I came with both legs broken,
And my eyes burned crisp as a couple of eggs.

Call him not heretic whose works attest
His faith in goodness by no creed confessed.
Whatever in love's name is truly done
To free the bound and lift the fallen one
Is done to Christ. Whoso in deed and word
Is not against Him labours for our Lord.
When he, who, sad and weary, longing sore
For love's sweet service sought the sisters' door
One saw the heavenly, one the human guest
But who shall say which loved the master best?

The diggings were just in their glory when Alister Cameron came,
With recommendations, he told me, from friends and a parson `at hame';
He read me his recommendations -- he called them a part of his plant --
The first one was signed by an Elder, the other by Cameron's aunt.
The meenister called him `ungodly -- a stray frae the fauld o' the Lord',
And his aunt set him down as a spendthrift, `a rebel at hame and abroad'.

He got drunk now and then and he gambled (such heroes are often the same);

In most self-portraits it is the face that dominates:
Cezanne is a pair of eyes swimming in brushstrokes,
Van Gogh stares out of a halo of swirling darkness,
Rembrant looks relieved as if he were taking a breather
from painting The Blinding of Sampson.

But in this one Goya stands well back from the mirror
and is seen posed in the clutter of his studio
addressing a canvas tilted back on a tall easel.

He appears to be smiling out at us as if he knew
we would be amused by the extraordinary hat on his head