Two Poems

He Thinks It’s Their First Book 

(The Cree Syllabary was authored by James Evans,
missionary, at Playgreen Lake, Manitoba, 1840) 

When he carves 
his hands surprise him, 
their greed for the oak: 
hoar of bark, orbit 
of heartwood, core of pith. 

His palms are callused, 
fingers thick 
on the eggshell smoothness 
of the blessed pages, 
on the oxblood leather 
of his Bible, 
blood of the Lamb. 

He spilled his own, 
nicked his thumb 
on the wood as he freed 
its tongue. He believes 
he will free their tongues, 
his flock, with his book. 

The Cree, 
whose name means 
the exact people, 
will read. 
Notwithstanding

the intransigence of the Company 
who forbid the printing press 
at his mission, 
who thinks it best that Indian minds 
be frozen like prairie lakes 
in the vice of winter. 
Notwithstanding 
the snub of Bible Societies who deem 
his ‘heathen’ alphabet substandard. 

Though bur oak is hard as granite, 
the letters rise, bit by bit, beneath 
his penknife, as native sounds 
formed in his mouth months before, 
at first imperfect, half-born. 
These letters more than letters, 
their simple shapes sing 
this place: goose neck, owl’s beak, 
moose track, warbler’s wing, 
round of heel, curl of canoe. 

On the next day, he creates paper: 
the lining of birch trees, immaculate— like the soul of an infant—gathered, 
flattened and dried in a press 
once used for hides. (He showed them too 

how to build proper homes, abandon 
those lodges of sticks and skins, thrown 
together at random angles.) 
His ink a concoction of fish oil and soot, 
he blackens the faces of the signs, 
the cells of the wood drink his elixir in. 
At last he inscribes the characters 
line by line, a syllabic system 
a bright Cree would learn in a week. 

Their minds break free, 
like rivers in a sudden thaw; 
they speak of him in whispers: the man 
who makes birch bark talk. 
They recite the commandments 
in order, one to ten; they know 
Our Father will forgive them 
again and again. And the men 
follow him in his tin canoe 
through the roar of Metachanais 
rapids to deliver the Truth 
          —their grandchildren will stand silent in
the laundry room at No. 17 residential school— 
now they can sing, 
the light in their eyes, 
The year of jubilee is come 
Return, ye ransomed sinners, home.

The Last Book (Ottawa, 2046) 

It lies in repose in the parliamentary library 
(unfit for the senate chamber or hall 
of honour). 
Not many bother to say farewell. 

I come by to escape the party 
for us staff at the Public Archives, 
replaced by a database 
the size of an eyelash, 
a customized library, 
an I-collection 
injected 
just beneath the skin 
on the inside of the wrist. 

Nobody keeps vigil. 
Shelves bereft of volumes 
stretch, aimless, to gothic windows, 
the glass chalk-white 
like the lithe Queen Victoria grasping 
her marble sword in the corner. 

I would place my hands, liver-spotted, 
on the acrylic case, but for alarms. 
Bell jar. Transparent sepulchre. 
Pages the hue of tea-soaked linen, 
thick between fingers like communion 
wafers, or so I remember. 

Letters for this Cree syllabary peculiar 
to me at first: tilted triangles, capsized E’s, 
inverted U’s, curled hieroglyphs, 
birds’ feet in the snow. Yet my body 
knows them like bone and skin— 
if I could coax them off the page, 
cup them for a moment in my palms,
I know I could feel them 
shape-shifting, soot tethers lifting, 
heading for the supple flesh 
of northern birches.

Cover Photo by Tony Mucci on Unsplash