Michael Harris was born in Glasgow, Scotland and grew up in Montreal. Harris has written seven books of poetry, won several prizes, and has been published in leading journals in North America and Europe. He has given over 200 readings throughout Canada and around the world and has translated the complete poetry of Marie-Claire Blais. Harris is also the founding editor of Véhicule Press’s Signal Editions. He has edited over fifty books of poetry by over thirty-five authors. In 1994, he edited The Signal Anthology: Contemporary Canadian Poetry. His most recent book, Circus(2010) was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award.
Here’s one of Harris’s most lovely poems, “The Gamekeeper.” A book of selected poems by the same title is due to be launched in October 2017.
The Gamekeeper
The salmon is still
in the noiseless black; she was quick-silvered
star to the ship whose hull
has sunk below the bottom of the lake.
The weeds stand stiff
in the shivering dark, and the gamekeeper’s gone
whose bears are now shadows
long done with their powers
in the mud-and-cold land.
The vixen’s neat paws print
the news in black stars
but the secret’s gone quick
and dug deeper. Autumn’s hold
has been broken
a million times over
and it’s snowing.
The bright hummingbirds flew
to find their hearts in
a frenzy, for the sky was a flower
that had lost its center
and the swarms in the air
were snow. Now they know all there is to know
of dark. And the gamekeeper’s gone
whose crow’s a tattoo
at the top of a tree, losing his grip
at the too-thin tip
of the cold that is pricking him bare.
He thinks war
and it’s war though the summer’s surrendered
and raised its white flag
a million times over
and it’s snowing.
Now the waddling porcupine’s swaying his quills
all at sea in the swaddle
of his winter fat;
he is slow in the sudden
and no match at all
for the silk and soft skins
of winter. He chews bark,
for the gamekeeper’s gone
whose snakes took green with them
and wove it in a bundle
and buried it under a rock,
for the earth had stopped in tatters
and lay down dead-white
dead-skinned, belly-up
and not right. Then the wind coiled hugely,
struck and coiled and shed its white
a million times over
and it’s snowing.
Plump rats and grey weasels channel blindly
their fright, clawing squealing
at their tunnels: to core them, seal them, escape
from the light, from the ache
of a world wide with snow; but their black brains
are caught, are furnaced with the spark:
the gamekeeper’s gone
whose starving, still hopeful, pure panic of deer
tiptoe the brittle-twigged landscape to silence
to a deadhalt
at the appletree; and the appletree’s victory stays
stiff-necked, full of thrash
in its iron-bare head of black antler,
in the slow-moving barrens of its branches
where the sky falls to pieces
sinking deeper and deeper
a million times over;
and it’s snowing on the otter
whose eye is a film of ice.
It whispers blessing the shivering field-mouse
whose heaven is black with snow.
It is snowing on the hare
whose fur is a layer of winter.
It falls against the houses,
against the drinkers in the bars,
a million times over. The gamekeeper’s gone.
The fields harden fast
around their stone.
