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Stand in the swaying boxcar doorwaymoving east away from the sunset andafter a while the eyes digest a country andthe belly perceives a mapmaker's visionin dust and dirt on the face and hands hereits smell drawn deep through the nostrils downto the lungs and spurts through the bloodstreamcampaigns in the lower intestine andchants love songs to the kidneysAfter a while there is no arrival andno departure possible any moreyou are where you were always goingand the shape of home is under your fingernails.I'm a product of some parents of the sort that shouldn'tbreeddidn't get much schooling past learning how to readgot the poetry bug in some forgotten institutionwhen first I did embark on my career of destitutionthe beauty of language set a hook in my soulme like a breadcrust soaking soup from a bowlYou can call this a rant but I declare I declaimAl Purdy's poems are the name of the gamethe winds of fate blow where they willI'll give you 3 Al Purdy's for a twenty dollar billLetras de cancionesPorkers in the counting house counting out the baconmatter's getting darker in the universe they're makingthey love the little guy until they get a better offerwith the dollar getting smaller they can fit more in theircoffersand the doings on the corner neither sung nor seenthey're circling the shopping carts at Sherbourne and QueenI resemble that assembly but I'm not the sameAl Purdy's poems are the name of my gamethe winds of fate blow where they willI'll give you 3 Al Purdy's for a twenty dollar billYou can spit on the prophet but respect the wordI've got some lines I want to spin you that you ought tohave heardthe winds of fate blow where they willI'll give you 3 Al Purdy's for a twenty dollar billthe winds of fate blow where they willI'll give you 3 Al Purdy's for a twenty dollar billAnd after the essence of everythinghad exchanged itself for words and becameanother being and could even be summonedfrom the far distance we chanted a spell of namesand we said "mountain be our friend"and we said "River guard us from enemies"And we said what it seemed the gods themselvesmight say if we had dreamed them and theyhad dreamed us from their high placesand they spoke to us in the forestfrom the river and the mountainand the mouths of the ochre-painted deadhad speech again and the watersspoke and the speech had wordsand our children remembered From Letras Mania