LOOKING UP & DOWN
Charles 'Trick' Currelly was the founder & first Curator of the Royal Ontario Museum of Archeology
Repeating task
somehow set long ago, imperious
beyond question, ignorance
fiddling in any way, & representing itself today
as my room
obstructed with the towering boxes of Kellogg's
& Pampers surrounded by the varicolored foothills
of green garbage & plastic shopping bags. Months ago
were inches of year old editions of the Globe & Mail, &
strewn helter skelter, then & now, everywhere
books, young & old, soft skin & hard, small & large.
My room. My represented existence.
This week, today
I'm excavating through the granite layers
hoping for the trick
that will open the day, date, & envelop of my arrival
& release the trapped, discarded artifacts that will tell.
An old lover's broach, thankyou from a reading promoter
sheet music, cancelled tickets, crumpled photograph
necklace of ostrich eggshell & volcanic glass
never-to-be-finished poems. . . .
Archeology is said to be based upon the garbage dump
the habit of man up through time
& that of near-man before him
to pile garbage high around & even in
the places where he lives. Bone, flint
shards of broken pots, teeth
worked pieces of things once useful. . . .
I am man. And I am near-man. And I'm
what looks down after.
Behold him, 'Trick' Currelly, as he
stoops to sift for truth
the unverifiable truth.
Poetry of themusic