The Norway Maple (Toronto)

Acer platanoides, chief of the urban arbour:

Like Sweno, the Norwayan king,

A stalwart bushy conqueror

Whose tale the poets sing.

He crossed the sea, invited,

In the reign of P.E.T.

To settle in the City blighted

By the scourging Elm disease.

Standing sentry over lawns and yards,

Limescent in the Springmer sun,

He shaded all the boulevards

As once the umbrous Elms had done.

Hearty he grew, and proud,

For did not the nation’s flag bear his noble face?

And yet he could not please the crowd

Who said this land was not his place.

A healthy wood, the ecologists said,

Forms a living web whose bonds are torn

When invades the foreign-bred;

Native Nature felled, they mourn.

The hipsters pined for the ancient Oak;

And denizens of the southern Beaches—

Academics and artsy, cultured folk—

Liked their garden dinners ‘neath the Ashes.

As the Viking of the land of his birth

Knew monk and peasant feared his call,

So the mighty Maple bloomed with mirth

As the City’s soil came under his thrall.

“The cold freezes not my vital juices;

My roots with relish drink the salt of the road;

How eager they bought into my ruses

As the cane-farmers welcomed the Queensland toad.”

And so Toronto upon the Lake

Was left without a choice to make;

If green the City desired to be,

Submit it must to the Norway Maple tree.

《毛蟲災（加拿大）》

安省鄉野小農莊，
暑天假期多舒暢。
樹木茂盛天氣熱，
孩子暫時停學業。
偶然風景似有怪，
具體遠古很難猜。
屋前田里古榆樹，
鴟梟棲息不舒服。
精神不安何說明？
忽觀天色耳緊聽。
環繞房子黑森林，
瞬間眨眼似來侵。
林邊樹枝忙扑騰，
驚悟今天沒有風。

Ghost Festival; High School Days

Intoxicating idleness of sweet summertime;

Along the boulevard, the locust trees

Feathered in fluorescent lime,

Shaggy lindens with jasmine scent the breeze;

The P-Mall arcade left behind.

Walking sluggish, having richly dined

On fare exotic, cheap and warming,

Savouring the air, fragrant and charming

Freed, for now, from education,

Voyaging together in friendly meditation;

Cosy cul-de-sac and gardened mead

And humid heat relax one’s speed,

By soughing leaves and distant highway’s murmurs,

Two friends spin tales and plan quaint adventures

Beneath the eyes of slumbering houses

—A discordant chill the goose-bumps rouses:

By moon-blued church, faced in carven stone,

Hinting to both “you are not alone.”

To the bus we rush, grab out our fare,

Laughing the moment we’re gone from there;

Each expounding on his sudden rout,

Concealing shivers as he declares his doubt.

Solidago

The goldenrod blooms in the August heat

Rolling ribbon of flaming floral light;

Monarchs on the milkweed rest wings and feet,

The sloped sun signals summer’s slow-born night

For which the fawn-brown spider’s spinning

Her web betwixt an elm-tree’s knotted limbs,

Beside the highway, on which one’s speeding;

Strange thoughts wax uncanny as daytime dims.

Past the verge squat homes: clapboard, low and plain,

Silvered barns and fence-posts, and rusting trucks—

The cosy and exotic sought in vain

Scanning map and memory without luck.

The screen-door up the gravelled path

Is a lawn and a universe away;

A fear of real or otherworldly wrath

Makes the driver to in their auto stay.

Clumsy boots crunching the road-shoulder’s stone,

Wandering to Somewhere in the gathering gloam;

Headlights snatch a spectre, wispy and lone,

As if a ghost were thumbing her way home.

Kensington Market

Fluorescent lime leaves,

A rainbow of flags and goods

Beneath the gabled eaves;

Incense and exotic foods,

Antique bricks and heirloom blooms

Artsy youths in rented rooms;

A crowded scene in memory sticks:

A painting – Bruegel in the 6ix.

The Persian Grocer

July in Toronto is a day drawn long,

Giddy with the swelter strolls the sluggish throng;

In a land of Winter, the fleeting heat

Is a bewildering and exotic treat.

The sun – does it put pedestrians’ minds

On adventurous tastes from foreign climes?

Or do the blogs and journos’ foodie tales

Bring in the bodies, ring up the sales?

On statisticians don’t waste your query;

Better to ask Rostam Esfandiari.

Up on Yonge Street, not far from Finch Station,

An old strip mall is your destination.

The parking lot’s broad and plenty spacious,

His shop, though small, is strangely capacious.

Beneath a sign, writ in languages two,

Through the glass-pane door, you’ll head into

The domain of the town’s top bazaari –

So, at least, says Rostam Esfandiari.

The shelves and racks – close-stacked – form avenues

To which your gaze can’t help but pay its dues;

Like checkerboard crop-fields, glimpsed far below,

Guiding nose and eye like a river’s flow,

Bags and jars, serried bins of rich-toned woods:

A display enchanting as the retailed goods.

His patrons ask if they ever left home:

Pistachios piled like a palace dome;

Raisins, almonds, and white-baked pumpkin seeds;

Gaz, saffron and halva for festive needs,

Cheeses of the quince, as well as the cow,

And pastries that paint sweat on the ‘keto’-mad brow.

Barbari and sangak in skateboard loaves,

In bottles, olives, of a thousand groves.

At this middle-noon hour, business slows;

Old Rostam, he shrugs: “That’s just how it goes.”

Slowly, slowly, the sun reddens and shrinks;

He strokes his moustache, and, idle, thinks

Of the half-recreated Far Away

That floats in perpetual Yesterday

And makes him, wondering, rub his shiny pate

As he ponders the whims of fickle Fate.

With nothing he arrived, when came the fall

Of he whose photo stares stern from the wall.

Confused and fearful was that midnight ride;

They lost wealth and status – but kept their pride.

Oh Cyrus! Sage King, who succoured those wandering in the wild,

Do you weep for your heirs, now forty years exiled?

With necessity’s wit and full measure of grit,

He and his wife won the place where they sit

In comfort enough to buy their son a Bimmer

And fund him to voyage on adventure

To see all that’s grand in Nature and Art,

As well to understand his father’s heart.

Their daughter – he knows not what she’ll be,

But she’ll be it better with a PhD.

A television playing, hung up high,

He watches the news and heaves out a sigh:

What’s this? His Homeland is on the program;

Feelings like water pressing at a dam:

Some sort of protest or grand gathering

That sets memories – bittersweet – tingling;

Faces – like his, when young – hardened with hope

Such that truncheons and teargas strain to cope;

Girls with green scarves flaunt their hair flowing bare,

Steely students for freedom – o’er life – care.

Alas, no more leisure for daytime dreams:

Work and school done, keen shoppers inward stream.

They pick and poke and squeeze and smile:

“Yelp-recommended”…”Haven’t had this in a while…”

Maryam and Soraya on their weekly round,

A gaggle of students, come from downtown,

Whose questions and critiques often are silly,

But the scoops in the bins scuffle busy.

Sometimes when he hears an inane discourse,

He must restrain his tongue with no mean force;

What can such folk ken of his fair country

Who learn it from docs on the BBC?

Breathing deep, in time’s wisdom finds his calm –

Sharing with sympathy: soul-soothing balm.

Thinks Rostam with a smile, his cheeks aglow,

“The more they’ll love, if more they know!

* * *

Ashes of a Beachside Fire

A waning noon in early Spring,

Lilac skies reveal the waxen moon

As northbound cloudwalls rumbling bring

Brooding shades o’er the tussocked dune.

Wearied mind and dust-greyed shoes, I reach

The circling stones of a camping fire

On a grove-ringed spit of City beach

In sight of the heaven-piercing spire.

Five years of snow in this cloistered spot,

Autumn rains and the vandal heart of Man

Have spared this humble, sacred grot

Where we feasted, drank, shared joke and plan.

Soot yet stains each egg of wave-smoothed shale,

Shrine of youthful commensality;

I toss a pinch of the cinders pale –

A gust dispels their unity.

Round this primal hearth there gathered six,

With fork-stuck wurst and mallow brand,

Where lie these stones and scorch-tipped sticks

And steel-faced waters crash the rock-piled strand.

As the Ash-fruits in the March-wind shivering,

I feel my spirit frail and bare;

When Winter does its winnowing,

Who chooses how we fare?

One lies buried, as some repugnant sin

That burned, self-expending, in the nocturne din.

Two have flown, like the maple’s breeze-borne seed,

Seeking far Salvation as traitors to our creed.

Two have gone to hiding

In a war they cannot win,

Work and play repelling

The thoughts lone midnights breed.

A bird of passage roaming a Paradise Lost

In melancholic awe,

Here then, at last, is me;

I raise a torch, cold in the e’entide frost,

And fling it out into the maw

Of that mocking inland sea.

. . .

Death on a Flower

High in a sky as faience blue
An orb like molten copper glows
Whose fire long chased the morning dew
Off milkweed, thistle, meadow rose;
Cardinal’s call, cicada’s whine
From berry bush and wild-grape vine
Echoes off pine-crowned roadside hill
Where currants ripe, baskets to fill;
Beyond the wood, the Lake beach reeks
Of hot dogs, beer and firework smoke;
The muskrats toil in sun-warmed creeks,
And dragonfly and Mourning Cloak
Dance and whirl, while the barred owl seeks
Soft repose in his hollowed oak
And tree-worms rest in elm-wood bower
Through blist’ring, buzzing mid-noon hour.
A busy bee – no rest for she –
Alights upon a gilt-plumed reed,
The goldenrod which bounds the lea,
So that her kin might thereof feed;
Spies she not that velvety bead?
Yellow, splashed pink, and tense with need –
The eyes, all eight, which gleam with greed?
No shadowed trap, nor silken snare –
‘Tis Beauty forms a murd’rer’s lair.
Lightning claws pounce from living bloom;
A poisoned bite thus seals her doom
While breeze-gusts in the verge-scrub play
Furtive whispers; a Summer’s day.

. . .