Dust or Fire Read online

  What is left of us when we are gone?

  In this assured debut collection, Alyda Faber examines the ties that bind us to one another and to the Earth we inhabit. Her unflinching gaze explores the imperfections of our fleeting existence, our ambitions, our relationships, our flawed humanity. In these quiet, sometimes unsettling poems, she documents the search for home, the longing to belong, to love, and to be loved. She also turns to the ways love can curve toward pain: how we carelessly hurt one another, yet find the grace to forgive and carry on.

  “To open the pages of Alyda Faber’s Dust or Fire is to embark on a questing journey into the fragmentary elusiveness of family history, the threatened survival of Frisian — the language of Friesland — and the precariousness of life itself. Along the way, the reader is repeatedly left breathless by the shimmering images and the intricately clever metaphoric wordplay Faber wields in her remarkably accomplished debut poetry collection.”

  — Ruth Roach Pierson, author of Realignment

  “Family and its aftermath, how to honour the devastation and save the girl? Circling around her parents’ meeting in a Frisian train station, Alyda Faber, at turns austere and lyric, elliptical and direct, zeroes in on love and fear until the atom splits. She gifts us with some of the best writing about family by a Canadian poet in many years.”

  — John Barton, author of Polari

  CAUTION:

  This e-book contains poetry. Before the invention of writing and books, and long before the harnessing of electricity, poetry roamed the earth. Poetry adapted to the book and welcomed the electric light (with which it could be read longer hours). Poetry is still uneasy about the recent invention of the e-book and does not always respond well to the dynamic environment an e-book reader offers.

  To set your poetry at ease, and to ensure the best possible reading experience, we recommend the following settings for your e-book reader:

  Different typefaces (fonts) can change the length of lines and the relationships between characters on the rendered page. If you can change the typeface on your reading device, choose one that you find pleasing to the eye, but we recommend the following for the best results: for Apple iPad (iBooks), use Original or Charter; for Kobo devices or apps, use the Publisher Default, Amasis, or Baskerville; for Kindle devices or apps, use Baskerville, if it is available.

  Set the font size as small as you can comfortably read; ideally it will be one of the 3 or 4 smallest font sizes on most apps and devices.

  Use portrait (vertical) mode.

  Use the narrowest line spacing and the widest margins available.

  If you can adjust the text alignment, use the publisher default or left justification.

  If you use a Kobo device or tablet app, turn “Kobo Styling” off.

  You will find the ideal settings for your device if you experiment on a poem with long lines and observe where the lines break and the visual shape of the poem starts to change as the text enlarges. If you follow these general guidelines, you should find the poems presented as the poets meant them to be read.

  Enjoy your new e-book.

  Goose Lane Editions

  Copyright © 2016 by Alyda Faber.

  All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). To contact Access Copyright, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call 1-800-893-5777.

  Edited by Ross Leckie.

  Cover and page design by Julie Scriver.

  Cover illustration adapted from Dybbølsbro Station by SirPecanGum, flickr.com

  (CC BY-SA 2.0).

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Faber, Alyda, 1963-, author

  Dust or fire / Alyda Faber.

  Poems.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-0-86492-922-8 (paperback).— ISBN 978-0-86492-942-6 (epub).— ISBN 978-0-86492-943-3 (mobi)

  I. Title.

  PS8611.A23D87 2016 C811’.6 C2016-902438-5

  C2016-902439-3

  We acknowledge the generous support of the Government of Canada,

  the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Government of New Brunswick.

  Goose Lane Editions

  500 Beaverbrook Court, Suite 330

  Fredericton, New Brunswick

  CANADA E3B 5X4

  www.gooselane.com

  In memory of my mother and father,

  Jacoba Faber Houtsma and Pieter Faber.

  That flesh is but the glass, which holds the dust

  That measures all our time

  — George Herbert, “Church Monuments”

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Contents

  Beginning

  UNSAYING POEMS Jealousy

  Cactus Essay

  Topsy-Turvy

  Inner Tube Run

  Grace Unwitting

  Treading Ox

  Chaste

  War Questions

  Paperpants

  Mole-Sick

  Three Old Frisian Sisters

  The Ones You Believe

  The Visit

  Looks

  On Not Dying

  Eulogy

  LEEUWARDEN TRAIN STATION Leeuwarden Train Station

  STILL LIFE, ANIMAL Still Life: Reprise

  Berlinale Erotik

  View of a Spring Evening between Porch Posts

  Flesh-Ear

  Goldfish

  Hoarfrost

  ARoS Museum, Aarhus

  Accept Loss

  Eucharist

  SAYING POEMS On Looking Up into a Tree

  Death at Five Years

  Trespassing

  Redress

  My Mother, Far and Near

  This Love for Mother

  Suture

  Meditations on Desire

  Birthday Call

  Arrival: Schiphol

  Meeting My Mother in Rotterdam

  Hawthorn

  Housekeeping: Portrait of My Father at Eighty-Two

  Obdurate, Infirm

  Resurrected Body

  Stockbridge Cemetery

  Visitation for an Aunt in Holland

  The last word that can never be spoken

  Cronus

  Portrait of My Father after Death

  Speed Dating

  Awry

  Leeuwarden Train Station

  Notes

  Acknowledgements

  Unsaying Poems

  Jealousy

  Hy mei it net lije dat de sinne yn it wetter skynt.

  I had the misfortune

  to be raised in a snake family

  the father all jaws and stomach

  long-nosed for frog hunting.

  Like the despot

  of a small country

  his name is whispered,

  his teeth grind every tongue.

  Try to own a small corner

  the nose finds its way in.

  And the father-enigma drops

  la jalousie down on my soul again —

  he doesn’t want the sun

  to shine on the water.

  Cactus Essay

  Byn it dy om de knibbel, dan slacht it dy net om it hert.

  i.

  On bright grass, the dead squirrel like a fur-cup,

  its rib unfurls out of a minute red sea.

  My mother lies in the hills, box-sealed from pain.

  Out of my vision, now she lingers in my throat.

  In an Ontario got
hic farmhouse, my mother remade

  Dutch windows she left behind. Succulents tangled

  in dusty friendliness. One winter she grew cacti from seed,

  wood heat and morning sun warming cloudy tents.

  If she’d met my father’s family before the wedding

  she wouldn’t have married him, my mother often said,

  but never told us of the conference of three,

  her parents’ doubts pared down by her keen love.

  Then a late summer ocean voyage to in-laws,

  food put to combative uses, basket greens

  of madness, wallpaper bullet wound,

  no-turning-back pregnancy.

  Remembering this is like opening the cellar door in spring,

  beneath the kitchen tiles dark water rises to the third step.

  Bind your grief under your knee

  ii.

  A nurse says my mother is dehydrating naturally. A week to dry out

  and then she begins to bleed. Waters of veins and arteries leak

  from the intestinal tract. Red weeping

  cannot be stopped on that last night of clicking breath.

  After fights, my mother would sit at the kitchen table long

  into the night, turned into that secret place

  she said a married woman

  must reserve for herself.

  Years later, she told me about chest pain and arm pain,

  and conflict. If I die, I could get out of here.

  She left one summer to live with her sisters in Holland

  and, returning, said, marriage is for life.

  A March visit to the doctor, her usual preparations neglected,

  wearing a crumpled print dress, smelling like overripe cheese.

  In the hospital lounge she touched my amber earrings

  and said, I am almost down the drain.

  Bind your grief under your knee and it won’t rise

  iii.

  Trees tell light.

  If only we could marry trees.

  My father found my mother lying in the yard

  under the maple tree, wearing a T-shirt and underwear.

  The feed man arrived.

  They carried her into the house.

  Three days later her eyes drift over me

  as if watching from the bed of a fast-moving stream.

  Her words roll out over stones.

  Under water, maybe I could understand.

  Cacti still occupy the north and west windowsills.

  On the floor, a cactus my mother grew from seed.

  Its fleshy stem strains against ceiling tile and plaster,

  reaching as if believing in a desert.

  Bind your grief under your knee and it won’t rise to your heart

  In my mother’s last days her flesh recedes —

  tree sculpted bone.

  Topsy-Turvy

  It is der alhiel holderdebolder.

  Always topsy-turvy here.

  She called it the household of Jan Steen

  and there on the Rijksmuseum wall

  dogs and people in a tangled

  mess and pots boiling over

  and somewhere in a corner someone

  has a psyche with no gates —

  a person bent over with

  socks half off and eyes sunk

  down to his kidneys.

  The entry gapes. No resistance —

  it’s already patterned

  and you’re there without

  knowing there or here

  or me or you in that

  interior household

  without

  advantage

  of standing back,

  looking,

  without chiaroscuro.

  Inner Tube Run

  Sy kin net fan it aai ôfkomme.

  A child watches other children sliding away

  from her over the edge

  of the round hill.

  Their faces reappear

  and disappear again.

  She’s held back

  from plunging into a deep

  white sea with them

  on rudderless inner tubes,

  weightless speed.

  The sinking children throw

  laughter back up the hill

  but she hears a dirge

  and waits

  until the sun tilts

  and tree shadows stretch

  out long in the fields.

  She can’t get off the egg

  until another child lures her

  into a squeaking black boat

  over the edge

  and down.

  Icy whirling wind

  and gentle spin.

  Grace Unwitting

  Dêr’t de hûn syn sturt leit, is it skjinfage.

  If God writes

  with a child-thick marker. . .

  Note this — bones

  in sockets rotating, inner folds

  digesting, electrical

  fields balancing, vast interior

  surfaces thrumming on —

  but on our surface

  so much debit accounting —

  ink gauged,

  lines measured

  exact, one thin-skinned tit

  scratched on another’s tat —

  But note this

  where the dog’s tail lies

  the floor is swept clean.

  Treading Ox

  De swarte okse hat dy noch net op de foet west.

  i.

  At nine years this is her experiment.

  Earth’s hardback trod by cows, cars, tractors, milk trucks,

  open sun outside the tree-surrounded house yard

  beyond the barn yard’s fenced peak of manure.

  Her uniform the required dress — girls wear dresses.

  The driveway’s hard surface cants

  as she tests the learned familiars —

  this is my body these my hands this my face.

  Who am i? Who am i? Who am i?

  One question asked and asked and asked

  rips down shelves holding things

  used to saying i am:

  falling clay pots, boxes with last year’s seed packets,

  torn tops folded down, dirt-caked gloves’ crooked fingers.

  Sun lances the sky, wrongness feels right.

  Why here looking out —

  these feet, these arms?

  Why this brain thinking behind these eye sockets?

  Who thinks this body that others know

  and call variations on a name?

  Why do they think they know her when the familiar seal

  holding the envelope this body this brain

  can be slit open

  exposing the private letter?

  What do they know when they say

  the black ox hasn’t trampled on your foot yet?

  ii.

  An unread letter opened other places too:

  Sunday-after-church,

  parents having coffee with parents,

  children scattered in the house. She stops midway

  in a room with oak mouldings, brick fireplace,

  face pointed to the dining room table, some chairs askew,

  legs inches from the deep sofa where her mother’s nyloned ankles

  and Sunday-shoed feet are entwined.

  Not knowing how to act in company

  stops her — her lack of polite questions — stops her.

  She doesn’t know how long she stands there.

  Wills herself into motion, enduring

  another twist of the hidden corkscrew.

  Chaste

  In soad wurden folje gjin sek.

  A man, let’s call him Door.

  That quaint impossibility

  a look sealed.

  More looks, trembling hand on coffee cup,

  more impossibility.

  All on my side.

  Those sensual autumns

  unwanted chasteness.


  Interior so lit up, the running

  landscape dark and unreadable.

  Words won’t fill a sack.

  Bushels of words even.

  Door wouldn’t come closer

  when my conflicted limbs and bones and kidneys

  said dont touch dont touch dont touch

  even as their needle-thin mewling says touch.

  War Questions

  Hy sjocht as in kat yn de foarke.

  Questions slide fingers

  under an arm’s pale

  frog thigh Clenched

  tobacco lid pulled

  open roll out stock pieces

  He’s in the passenger seat

  I’m driving each query

  drawing out a bare answer

  from the interrogation chair

  Splintery obedience

  He looks like a cat caught

  in pitchfork tines

  Cannot tell his distress

  Sits unmoving, his hand

  cutting an angle across

  his chest and a sound

  like low tired exhalation

  Fear of being shot

  he doesn’t say

  Guilt leaving his father

  he doesn’t say

  Returning home without

  his father he doesn’t say

  Lost respect he says

  Lost respect how I want

  to know what that means

  I don’t ask

  Escape from Germans

  in his socks klompen kicked off

  Running across a beet field

  Escape socks Germans beet field

  Socks beet field escape Germans

  All these years alone in the story

  This telling he and his father

  captured by Germans rounding

  a corner in the village one year

  before war’s end Beginning

  of his father’s bitter cinders

  Marched in file with neighbours

  and a neighbour’s hired

  hand to a hotel

  in the next village

  His only chance for escape

  outside the village

  Kicking off his klompen

  and his father he ran

  into the beet field

  In a camp near

  the German border

  prisoners dug tank traps

  to keep the Allies out of Holland