3 Al Purdy's

Stand in the swaying boxcar doorway
 Moving east, away from the sunset
 And after a while the eyes digest a country
 And the belly perceives a mapmaker's vision
 In dust and dirt on the face and hands here
 Its smell drawn deep through the nostrils
 Down to the lungs and spurts through the bloodstream
 Campaigns in the lower intestine chants love songs to the kidneys
 After a while there is no arrival and no departure possible any more
 You are where you were always going and the shape of home is under your fingernails
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 I'm a product of some parents of the sort that shouldn't breed
 Didn't get much schooling past learning how to read
 Got the poetry bug in some forgotten institution
 When first I did embark on this career of destitution
 The beauty of language set a hook in my soul
 Me like a breadcrust soaking soup from a bowl
 You can call this a rant but I declare, I declaim
 Al Purdy's poems are the name of the game
 The winds of fate blow where they will
 I'll give you three Al Purdy's for a 20 dollar bill
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 Porkers in the counting house counting out the bacon
 Matter's getting darker in the universe they're making
 They love the little guy until they get a better offer
 With the dollar getting smaller they can fit more in their coffers
 The doings on the corner neither sung nor seen
 They're circling the shopping carts at Sherbourne and Queen
 I resemble that assembly but I'm not the same
 Al Purdy's poems are the name of my game
 The winds of fate blow where they will
 I'll give you three Al Purdy's for a 20 dollar bill
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 You can spit on the prophet but respect the word
 I've got some lines I want to spin you that you ought to have heard
 The winds of fate blow where they will
 I'll give you three Al Purdy's for a 20 dollar bill
 ♪
 The winds of fate blow where they will
 I'll give you three Al Purdy's for a 20 dollar bill
 ♪
 And after the essence of everything had exchanged itself for words
 And became another being and could even be summoned
 From the far distance we chanted a spell of names
 And we said, "Mountain be our friend"
 And we said, "River guard us from enemies"
 And we said what it seemed the Gods themselves might say
 If we had dreamed them and they had dreamed us from their high places
 And they spoke to us in the forest from the river and the mountain
 And the mouths of the ochre-painted dead had speech again
 And the waters spoke and the speech had words
 And our children remembered