A poem for Canada Day, 2010

Civil Elegy

after Dennis Lee

 

Often the sun, the pollution, and the lives

of citizens congregating are

no different, invisible until

they come gutted to the concrete.

I watch the furies one morning, my city

nailed, men and women muddy

and crumpled before the

phalanx riding down Yonge Street.  

Eight-hundred odd scared skinny gawked

and bolted like rabbits, zigzag

through porticos, twitching,

rootless, human. We might asphyxiate.

But in the tangle of truth, out of the smog

and empire, we sit down as if our lives were real.

-- Paul Vermeersch, Canada Day, 2010

I created this poem on reflection of the events of the G20 summit in Toronto last week, during which we saw the largest mass arrests in Canadian history, executed with the flagrant abuse of police powers and the violation of the rights of hundreds of ordinary citizens as enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This is an “elision” poem; the entire text of this sonnet is redacted from Civil Elegies (part 1) by Dennis Lee.