On Malice Read online

  copyright © Ken Babstock, 2014

  first edition

  Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Coach House Books also ­cknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Babstock, Ken, 1970-, author

  On malice / Ken Babstock.

  Poem.

  ISBN 978-1-55245-304-9 (pbk.)

  I. Title.

  ps8553.a245o5 2014 c811'.54 c2014-904403-8

  On Malice is available as an ebook: ISBN 978 1 77056 401 5

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  for Samuel, who can bend time,

  and for Laura

  Yes, these are conquests from the castle. I washed

  my neck and my main source of food. Unfortunately,

  I also washed my supplementary animal.

  I have just built a … There is a struggle between …

  Stamp out all the frogs at evening. I like especially

  death. This is not a waiting room for souls.

  From this camp I abjure Time and expect Time

  in its other body to spike through

  the lateral. Rain accrues

  on the motiveless and hungry.

  If you can’t imagine being watched,

  you can’t imagine how good I am.

  1 September, 1970, plane leaving Alma-Ata for Tashkent. Incident reported at 23:50.

  What one otherwise only dreams

  signifies a flight, a flight

  into the unwashed. The word

  ‘supplementary.’ That is from

  the Christian religion. That is from

  the battlements. It has to hit someone.

  Yet all the just and wonderful smells

  of air on earth. The beach swims forward.

  The battlements under

  mine eyes shift so. Build-up of wax,

  oil, dermis, it flakes off fortune

  and smells where you hit someone.

  Incident on 2nd September, 1970, at 23:05, over Aldan. Plane in descent.

  He has built a town in the garden.

  Do unto others as you would.

  It carried me away.

  It carried me away –

  that matter is required between creations.

  You do and have done unto you

  any number of jewelled, riverine shot

  in cities built up in a garden.

  The heat in the space you were.

  The one bloom on the terrace

  and the rip in the cirrus, many in bloom

  and your body used up all night.

  Incident west of Blagovashensk, altitude unreported, September 5, 1970.

  As chum carries into waters lying south

  or southeast. How would song

  be considered everything and people

  succumb? Most powerful ‘Is,’ or almost

  one hour south in relation.

  Yes, animals. This is not a waiting room

  and the smell of tyranny detected

  in spit, piece by piece, each a sign

  for a kiss. It hit someone,

  radio’s still ripe for abuse.

  Camera in log. Camera in pen. Lens

  of the loosened dust where a dress drops.

  On September 7, 1970, at 22:15, incident over Baykrit, Krasnogorsk. Heavy rain.

  Everyone thinks Lord in relation

  to animals. Relation to substance, perhaps, often

  for hour after hour. Eternal struggle

  with him croaking and people there almost

  with us. Now

  I am thinking. How beautiful her true

  form can become. Neither alone

  nor fully with them, balanced

  naked, wet and bruised.

  Noisesome takeoff not helping me think

  in mauve, rose and silvering blue.

  The first star, wing light in the tagged mouth, sobs.

  Night. Ten minutes after takeoff from Biysk, September 11, 1971.

  Hardly ever showed it mixed up with

  ‘photograph.’ Who is that then?

  A strange bandit with a tablecloth

  behind her. Suppose it is he

  whom she is courting, or

  a ‘philosopher.’ Or gruesomeness …

  None of it diminishing morning as such.

  Thinnest film in the canopied air so animals

  rut or flex fighting dissolution

  as we say ‘Lord’ again, facing southeast.

  Where ribbons the peach and violet

  meteorological summa. My form bleats.

  Incident reported over Chita Oblast, at 21:40. No other traffic.

  You too are concrete, greensomeness, and no one

  wants him. Can I talk? Yes. Here

  people become through efficiency.

  I now am a messed-up twilight.

  I now – can I talk? – am a twilight

  come early. A man – Yes?

  She pulled faces from the various

  performances. Aria or folk

  embroidery, as might labour in ditches

  during no time. You split lip.

  You contusion, cannot bear Lord

  under circumstance indexed as grievance.

  September 21, 1972, Chelyabinsk, altitude at time of incident was 3000 m.

  One can get very thin.

  One doesn’t read at night. Now

  as you are writing there is such a storm,

  otherwise the darkness, you understand,

  and will remain dark forever.

  Have joy in the town. The skeletons are failing

  whatsoever occur in your heart. Be it

  sin, starvation, clemency or rage.

  Be it sin. Animal, burrowed prayer;

  one can thin out. Consider doughnuts,

  or the rattle and spur-scrape and

  first-person oar locks. The town’s joy’s yours.

  Flight bound for Christopol from the east. Incident reported at 20:55, September 29, 1973.

  It is modern. Couldn’t you have brought

  me into the world three

  days later? You

  could have (the cat is laughing)

  pushed me back in again.

  It is modern. Who do you prefer?

  The banks close as the banks close.

  One of me, having been forced out, could

  be watched over with no undue

  taxing of beneficent – Throw it off.

  The rattle again of splintered waste

  in orbit; shards, at speed, incredibly cold.

  September 30, 1973, approaching Dudinka, altitude 3500 m. Time of incident, 20:22.

  Don’t say anything funny. Isn’t that possible?

  Isn’t that at all

  times what holds one together?

  Little fairy tales all at once. Stomach fright.

  One never hears about compulsion.

  ‘Killed’ is a word with a star tied around it.

  One can listen all night, they won’t

  talk of ‘compulsion.’ Compulsion

  is a wind with the unmodern cat

  stapled to it. The anus constricts.

  Needles of yellow and red light, little

  aurora materialis and night eyes of the pig family.

  At 19:45, over Gorno-Ataysk. August 1974.

  The trees are dens
e here.

  The earth doesn’t have a limit.

  And again and again limits and grumbling bring

  one to the bank of cheerful things. Say,

  everything. Everything does not have.

  Everything does not have to have.

  Counting neurons in bivalves

  helps us think on think, though

  won’t ground the plane,

  or warm you. The nights decline.

  Have you noted this effect, this holding

  your kidneys while swaying under a draft vent?

  August 3, 1974, at 19:10 (local time) in heavy winds approaching Irkutsk.

  Completely out for as long as one

  doesn’t see. That all money

  removed from this world

  can read as simply non limit, or

  it can go round again. No

  earth. No lost limit. All

  the children love their limits

  more than their fathers.

  Should this shame us again?

  I can smell your mind.

  I enhance the quotient of suffering

  by building pictures of forced concord.

  Again in high winds, 18:33, August 1975, altitude unrecorded at time of incident. Inta (tower).

  You don’t have to go anymore,

  read to me.

  You don’t have to go from the world.

  Finally, he says, I and everything

  have a limit. Count one more day out.

  The case has been lost again, and again

  the rippling cirrus glows amber-black

  to the west. My undeclared cache

  of pebbles and desiccated scat,

  my Mayan counting machine, my

  mai tai, and many-horned hillock.

  It is, I’m afraid, a symbol, dear rubble.

  1975. Komsamotsk on Amur. Incident between 3500 m and 3800 m, during descent.

  I am practising dead songs and

  then they will be printed and

  we’ll get Heaven – get money.

  When it eats, the soul is of no interest to me.

  What is in it, ice? While what

  happened to soft difference in school is horrible,

  it wants to eat. There will be no shaking

  the thorns from the stem. There

  will be no clarification.

  The ballooning complex left

  it a shambles. Security. Think of a weaving

  barn. Think of a good reason not to quit listening.

  August 15, 1976, 17:55, aircraft approaching Krasnokamansk. Altitude unreported.

  Suppose the weirdest bed is between

  Heaven and Earth, and school

  roams days between

  ice and practising songs.

  We’ll be of no interest

  to the dead. Whether the dead Lord

  with the red-hot iron shoes lay

  for us once is of no interest

  to the books.

  We chaptered over our clothing

  in the common sink, never lifting

  our gaze. I’ve a miner’s lamp, no fire.

  August 22, 1976, at 17:40. Khatanga.

  Don’t write to her. Perhaps she’ll love

  you separated more.

  ‘On the fifth, because I will be

  like your dress.’ Sometimes nobody

  gives a mind in their head

  the whole journey. We are not separated,

  we are beforehand. Catkins, then burrs.

  The lamp switched on prior to the journey

  by throwing a switch at the dome’s posterior.

  Grinding of teeth under the chestnut

  on Etna. It’s as though

  the summit invites a downgrade. Bark death.

  Krosnayorsk. Light rain.

  Eleven years of green bread still

  nobody, dear Lord, isn’t oneself,

  but thank you. Isn’t that right? Give them a picture

  of no bread, a mean flower more bush

  than the love in their heads, a picture

  of will separated from matter and head stuff.

  The green being flensed, combed out, rehashed –

  chesnut? beech? A severe

  grade, the cobbles and brick fragments boiling

  through topsoil. Night hikes up here

  and chases out shreds, Finnish wind. A fragile

  lantern tarp rags are whipping at.

  Kemerovo, August 28, 1978, at 15:30, altitude 3900 m.

  A girl said I should eat. Well, am I

  such a coward inside? Regarding winter,

  other children bit you, you were after interests.

  Inside, one knows everything, but

  how does the house see? It is

  totally unwindowed!

  The rustling in the approach

  as the wing lights climb. I distinguish

  that from those without reason

  so count old rivets, voltage, then fall back

  into shadow. How does she know

  everything to be unwindowed?

  Reported at 15:04, July 4, 1978, shortly before landing at Kolpashevo.

  You finish reading it. You cannot

  finish reading it. Ice caught

  in the can; later, the well. What

  shall I be worried about,

  the coward well and the ice does

  such a lot. They know nothing

  of cantilevered blown-out shells

  who feed their worry

  like veal barns. The dome’s aerial

  my lodestar and icon, the squirrel

  at dusk in the post-informational gloaming

  can never not finish reading it as song.

  July 9, 1979. 14:50, in clear conditions southeast of Kogalym.

  Your little lamp, for example,

  on the mountain sleeping all night.

  I have to think about it, or

  pull it out of my head. For example,

  a clown goes over my face

  with his claws. I have seen poorly

  for so long. Raking the overgrowth

  at the perimeter fence. Metal filing

  shelves lashed to the chain-link gaps.

  It kept the west out of the west’s mind.

  It kept the Lord out of your

  dress for a time.

  Incident in July, Magnitogorsk, at an unknown altitude.

  Because I am sleeping in love’s room

  now, the moment will have

  received a promise to wait.

  The mountain will finally be rid of the town.

  Wait a bit, and the mountain

  you have not seen goes over your face –

  The singing upgrades to ice

  crystals of Saturn’s rings raking

  the outer hull.

  Hello, thing. The geodesic temple and

  your dress in your mouth signalling to

  the western squirrel at the gap.

  Summer 1980, incident at 12:30, nearing 4000 m, Nizhneangarsk.

  Be rid of the face in the room now.

  Sweet clown, they promise

  and do not do it;

  they can’t pull it out. Go think

  about it, kisses received from

  here in the mountain with him gone

  are as slurry in a gallon pail,

  are a thin suspension ferried southeast

  into the town from the summit

  in a spirit of devotional commerce

  and labour. The material rips from the frame.

  Straight pins of stars and the blanked vector lines.

  July 24, 1981, near Novokuznetsk, midday, little to no damage.

  Don’t, you undo the good behaviour

  all the time. Don’t undo

  the good behaviour all the time.

  Wonderful Ultra, it is not broken,

  it is still hanging there.

  Big monkey not going more in my mouth –

  Not the beach only but the
sea behind

  it and behind that its hale minions

  and the monstrous canyons of chance.

  It all begins to swim forward.

  I lie with the dead Lord, the anus

  constricts, I cover us both with your dress.

  Noon, July 28, 1981, approaching Novosibirsk from the south, altitude unknown.

  The fairground screamed. The mountains