The Blue Guitar

They said, ‘You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.’
The man replied, ‘Things as they are
are changed upon the blue guitar.’

- The Blue Guitar (Wallace Stevens)


I do my best to tell it true

a thing exceeding hard to do

or tell it slant as Emily

advises in her poetry,

and, colour blind, how can I know

if green is blue or cinnabar.

Find me a colour chart that I

can check against a summer sky.

My eye is on a distant star.

They said, ‘You have a blue guitar.’


‘I have,’ the man replied, ‘it’s true.

The instrument I strum is blue

I strum my joy, I strum my pain

I strum the sun, I strum the rain.

But tell me, what is that to you?

You see things as you think they are.

Remove the mote within your ear

then talk to me of what you hear.’

They said, ‘Go smoke a blue cigar!

You do not play things as they are.’


‘Things as they are? Above? Below?

In hell or heaven? Fast or slow …?’

They silenced him. ‘It’s not about

philosophy, so cut it out.

We want the truth and not what you

are playing on the blue guitar.

So start again and play it straight

don’t improvise, prevaricate.

Just play things as they really are.’

The man replied, ‘Things as they are


are not the same as things that were

or will be in another year.

The literal is rarely true

for truth is old and truth is new

and faceted – a metaphor

for something higher than we are.

I play the truth of Everyman

I play the truth as best I can.

The things I play are better far

when changed upon the blue guitar.’


 P.K. Page

The Maze

Compelled and carrying out a strange instruction,
Vital, timeless, tangible as a thread,
I was tracing the spiral nebula in my head.
When I think of it now,
I remember the path frozen
And how, on the inside edge of a bowed skate,
I arrived at the heart of the maze in a clean sweep.
Reached le ciel in a long unbroken spiral.
Yet the truth of the matter escapes:
There is no returning beyond the sudden narrowing of the curve,
Eye of the nautilus, the ram's horn,
Memory fails me at every try,
I follow the spiralling pathway over and over,
Run, hoping to pass that place on the sharpening turn,
To grow small then small,
Smaller still, and enter the maze's vanish point,
A spark extinquished.

P.K. Page

Still Waters: The Poetry of P.K. Page by Donald Winkler, National Film Board of Canada

This Heavy Craft

The wax has melted
but the dream of flight
persists.
I, Icarus, though grounded
in my flesh
have one bright section in me
where a bird
night after starry night
while I'm asleep
unfolds its phantom wings

and practices.

P.K. Page

Autumn

Whoever has no house now will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone
Will sit, read, write long letters through the evening
And wander on the boulevards, up and down...

Autumn Day Rainer Maria Rilke

Its stain is everywhere.
The sharpening air
of late afternoon
is now the colour of tea.
Once-glycerined green leaves
burned by a summer sun
are brittle and ochre.
Night enters day like a thief.
And children fear that the beautiful daylight has gone.
Whoever has no house now will never have one.

It is the best and the worst time.
Around a fire, everyone laughing,
brocaded curtains drawn,
nowhere-anywhere-is more safe than here.
The whole world is a cup
one could hold in one's hand like a stone
warmed by that same summer sun.
But the dead or the near dead
are now all knucklebone.
Whoever is alone will stay alone.

Nothing to do. Nothing to really do.
Toast and tea are nothing.
Kettle boils dry.
Shut the night out or let it in,
it is a cat on the wrong side of the door
w hichever side it is on. A black thing
with its implacable face.
To avoid it you
will tell yourself you are something,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening.


Even though there is bounty, a full harvest
that sharp sweetness in the teastained air
is reserved for those who have made a straw
fine as a hair to suck it through -
fine as a golden hair.
Wearing a smile or a frown
God's face is always there.
It is up to you
if you take your wintry restlessness into the town
and wander on the boulevards, up and down.

P.K. Page