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Dream tapestries

Chapter 23: TWELVE HOKKU ON A CANADIAN THEME
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About This Book

A collection of lyrical poems that weave dreamlike imagery with everyday and mythic scenes. The poems move between enchanted woods, haunted gardens, village interiors and symbolic tableaux, using vivid sensory language—moonlight, apples, flowers, purple pall—to examine longing, loss, desire, and memory. Some pieces adopt songlike forms and short lyric units; others are narrative sketches evoking funerary rites, domestic rituals, and moments of feminine reflection. Recurrent motifs of time, mourning, and the uncanny create a tapestry of mood shifts from playful to elegiac, inviting readers to linger in symbolic moments rather than in continuous narrative.

TWELVE HOKKU ON A CANADIAN THEME

(1)

HOW strangely they float,
Pale gold and ivory cups,
On wilderness lakes.

(2)

The loon’s weird laughter
Holds Indian deviltry,
Long, long forgotten.

(3)

Indian cradle
Swung from bough, rocked by Four Winds:
Christ lay in manger.

(4)

Silver-haired Marquise!
You were transplanted, one Spring,
Into wild New France.

(5)

The sugar maples ...
Benevolent goddesses
Who offer honey.

(6)

Snow-shoes: like strong wings
Bound on the feet of victors
Conquering snow-fields.

(7)

On city pavements
Two muffled, sombre nuns pace,
Behind laughing girls.

(8)

You set narcissus
Amidst your silver birches
By Northern lakeside.

(9)

Five o’clock! You pause ...
Handle frail, old cups, pour tea,
And become grande dame.

(10)

When Loneliness stalked ...
Black panther through gold wheat-fields ...
You used Love’s arrows.

(11)

Puissant woman!...
Sheltering tiny things like
English primroses!

(12)

Fast the new trails lead
From wilderness to city!
Years pass ... Canada!