Borrowed Days - Poems New And Selected - Marc Plourde (Cormorant Books)

Today's book of poetry:
Borrowed Days - Poems New And Selected.  
Marc Plourde.  Cormorant Books.  Toronto, Ontario.  2016.

When Borrowed Days - Poems New and Selected by Marc Plourde came through the Today's book of poetry doors our "Poetry Bat Ears" tingled.  A few minutes with Milo, our head tech, in the stacks and BINGO.  Touchings (Fiddlehead Poetry Books, 1970) jumped out at us.  This charming Marc Plourde chapbook includes lovely artwork by Noreen Hood (Today's book of poetry thinks Noreen Hood was married to Hugh Hood) and posits Plourde squarely into the middle of the Montreal literary scene circa 1970.

There's a lot of water under the bridge from 1970 to the present.  Borrowed Days doesn't miss a beat, it reads/feels like an old lost friend from Montreal has come for a visit.  An old friend who has seen the world and recognizes his small part in it.

Plourde "stopped writing for some twenty years" and concentrated on translating some of the best Quebecois writers of his generation.  Today's book of poetry is glad to see Marc Plourde back in the saddle.  We can tell you, with confidence, that Plourde could cook before his hiatus and it would seem he has picked up the torch again without missing a step.

In Park Extension

Some kids never go home. Evenings

they're out front of the poolroom, nervous

to get away, too young still

for a motorcycle

they stand-sit on the curb

seems almost

they grow out of the pavement, are always there

like the cops, the butcher shop, the Greek

pastry store, and old European

toadlike women each day crossing the railroad

to the factory

and back again, they come

bodies toddling

with the weight of their shopping bags full.

April and how this weather is

too cold still, tonight Carol, Dominic, Lagetti

will go looking for an apartment

hallway, one they've not been

kicked out of; half the fun the kids say

is waiting for the janitor

and running

Carol runs-walks back bent, feet pointed

inward, so is nicknamed "pigeon toes".

It was glue sniffing hurt her

legs, her joints,

she told me

and I didn't believe her at first;

first time I saw her walk I thought it a joke.

Dominic is part of The Tribe,

the neighbourhood gang; he has a red devil's

head etched

on the back of his jacket

and black gloves he flexes his hands in

and makes "snap" leather sounds with,

one fist

hitting the other opened hand, and he has

motorcycle boots, though no motorcycle.

Carol's also part of it;

her initiation came, she says, last week

at the Saint Anthony's

church basement Friday night dance,

in the toilet, they raped her she says.

Music reaches down Howard Street.

Outside, there are kids leaning on a railing,

lighting matches; the jukebox

song comes to them

in pieces, in the traffic

of people opening-shutting the poolroom

door, and it seems

almost they're dancing: Carol, with Lagetti

bent over her, his arms

moving inside her coat. When she turns away

she is tugging her jeans back

up her hips, she laughs and

swears; the popcorn box tucked in her belt

has spilled, pink kernels covering the sidewalk.

...

Marc Plourde's Borrowed Days places itself at the heart of Canada's two solitudes and that heart beats strongly on every single street that Plourde manifests from memory.  Walking through Borrowed Days tells us more about Montreal than any map or cartographer.

Plourde does venture out of Montreal and his poem "The Shoes of Budapest" tells us all we need to know about the worldly author.  But for the most part Plourde's heart resides on streets of his city where Plourde is a gentle humanist who sees hope in redemption.  These poems see redemption as a duty.

A Prelude

The plot was on a rise;

we had to climb to it, stand lopsided

at the graveside while rain fell

on December snow, on the ground at our feet

like a prelude to the new year's storm.

The family of stragglers was about to leave

when the old woman's youngest son, my cousin,

insisted on shaking everyone's hand

and showily hugged his older brother,

who appeared this morning

after twenty years, jetlagged

and jettisoned in a back pew of St. Francis.

As I entered the church, the younger brother

turned in his seat: I saw a thin face, a goatee,

a removed look. I searched for the boy's face

in the man's and as I looked

the priest began the funeral mass

though he was dying on his feet.

His eulogy remembered Margaret's devotions

at the Stations of the Cross

and her dusting the church statuary,

St. Francis and St. Roch,

but the family knew Margaret in her last year

had got confused, would bang daily

on the rectory door, demanding Sunday mass.

For Margaret, every day had become Sunday.

And the priest, Father Kirouac,

whose most constant parishioner

was demented  -  I wonder,

did he open the door to her?

Was there patience in his face

as he knew, more or less,

they would both be gone before spring?

After mass, seated on the altar steps,

he apologized in shallow breaths

for not accompanying us to the grave.

He outlived her by six weeks.

...

Today's book of poetry's morning read had Pharoah Sander's "Let Us Go Into The House Of The Lord" playing on the box this morning.  We followed that up with Yusef Lateef's sublime "Eastern Sounds" which may be the most overlooked masterpiece in jazz.  These both seemed appropriate choices for the steady and measured voice that Marc Plourde brings to the table.

Maybe it is as simple as this: a particular tone in a voice that tells you it seeks reason and clarity.  Plourde is all over that.

Greyhound to Burlington

It rains and stops the morning long; we sleep

the long drive through mountain clouds.

Tomorrow, who will remember this?

Mist floating like moss in the pine trees,

grey mist blurring the mountains to memory; now

blossoms peck and spatter the glass, the windshield

wipers not moving, not moving yet.

...

Today's book of poetry is always going to have all the time in the world for poetry like Marc Plourde's Borrowed Days.

Whether he is inside the microcosm of a 1970's Montreal neighbourhood or aloft in the big world beyond Plourde's poems engage, inform and entertain.  Just like an old friend.

Marc Plourde

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in Montreal in 1951, Marc Plourde established himself very early both as a poet and as a translator. His books of poetry include Touchings (1971) and The White Magnet (1973). His books of translation include The Grandfathers by Victor-Lévy Beaulieu (1975) and The Agonized Life by Gaston Miron (1980). He has published no original poetry in book form in over forty years.

cormorantbooks.com

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