Power
Politics
ALSO BY MARGARET ATWOOD
Poetry
The Animals in That Country
The Circle Game
Interlunar
The Journals of Susanna Moodie
Morning in the Burned House
Procedures for Underground
Selected Poems [1966-1974]
Selected Poems 1966-1984
Selected Poems II: Poems Selected and New, 1976-1986
True Stories
Two-Headed Poems
You Are Happy
Fiction
Alias Grace
The Blind Assassin
Bluebeard’s Egg
Bodily Harm
Cat’s Eye
Dancing Girls
The Edible Woman
Good Bones
Good Bones and Simple Murders
The Handmaid’s Tale
Lady Oracle
Life Before Man
Murder in the Dark
Oryx and Crake
The Robber Bride
Surfacing
Wilderness Tips
Nonfiction
Days of the Rebels 1815-1840
Moving Targets: Writing with Intent 1982-2004
Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing
Second Words: Selected Critical Prose 1960-1982
Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature
Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature
Two Solicitudes: Conversations [with Victor-Lévy Beaulieu]
Power
Politics
margaret atwood
poems
Copyright © 1971 , 1996 Margaret Atwood
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
First published in 1971 by House of Anansi Press Ltd.
Revised edition published in 1996
This edition published in 2005 by
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LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Atwood, Margaret, 1939-
Power politics
2nd ed.
Poems.
ISBN 0-88784-579-7
I. Title.
PS8501.T86P671996 C811’.54 C96-930636-9
PR9199.3.A78P67 1996
Some of these poems appeared on CBC Anthology, and in the following magazines: Blew Ointment, Kayak, New Work, Saturday Night, Tuatara, and Vigilante. “Hesitations Outside the Door” and “You refuse to own / yourself” first appeared in Poetry (Chicago). “They are hostile nations” was published as a broadsheet by Peter Martin Associates.
Cover design: Bill Douglas at The Bang
Author photograph: Dominic Turner
We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
Printed and bound in Canada
Power
Politics
you fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye
He reappears
You rose from a snowbank
with three heads, all
your hands were in your pockets
I said, haven’t
I seen you somewhere before
You pretended you were hungry
I offered you sandwiches and gingerale
but you refused
Your six eyes glowed
red, you shivered cunningly
Can’t we
be friends I said;
you didn’t answer.
You take my hand and
I’m suddenly in a bad movie,
it goes on and on and
why am I fascinated
We waltz in slow motion
through an air stale with aphorisms
we meet behind endless potted palms
you climb through the wrong windows
Other people are leaving
but I always stay till the end
I paid my money, I
want to see what happens.
In chance bathtubs I have to
peel you off me
in the form of smoke and melted
celluloid
Have to face it I’m
finally an addict,
the smell of popcorn and worn plush
lingers for weeks
She considers evading him
I can change myself
more easily
than I can change you
I could grow bark and
become a shrub
or switch back in time
to the woman image left
in cave rubble, the drowned
stomach bulbed with fertility,
face a tiny bead, a
lump, queen of the termites
or (better) speed myself up,
disguise myself in the knuckles
and purple-veined veils of old ladies,
become arthritic and genteel
or one twist further:
collapse across your
bed clutching my heart
and pull the nostalgic sheet up over
my waxed farewell smile
which would be inconvenient
but final.
They eat out
In restaurants we argue
over which of us will pay for your funeral
though the real question is
whether or not I will make you immortal.
At the moment only I
can do it and so
I raise the magic fork
over the plate of beef fried rice
and plunge it into your heart.
There is a faint pop, a sizzle
and through your own split head
you rise up glowing;
the ceiling opens
a voice sings Love Is A Many
Splendoured Thing
you hang suspended above the city
in blue tights and a red cape,
your eyes flashing in unison.
The other diners regard you
some with awe, some only with boredom:
they cannot decide if you are a new weapon
or only a new advertisement.
As for me, I continue eating;
I liked you better the way you were,
but you were always ambitious.
After the agony in the guest
bedroom, you lying by the
overturned bed
your face uplifted, neck propped
against the windowsill, my arm
under you, cold moon
shining down through the window
wine mist rising
around you, an almost-
visible halo
You say, Do you
love me, do you love me
I answer you
:
I stretch your arms out
one to either side,
your head slumps forward.
Later I take you home
in a taxi, and you
are sick in the bathtub.
My beautiful wooden leader
with your heartful of medals
made of wood, fixing it
each time so you almost win,
you long to be bandaged
before you have been cut.
My love for you is the love
of one statue for another: tensed
and static. General, you enlist
my body in your heroic
struggle to become real:
though you promise bronze rescues
you hold me by the left ankle
so that my head brushes the ground,
my eyes are blinded,
my hair fills with white ribbons.
There are hordes of me now, alike
and paralyzed, we follow you
scattering floral tributes
under your hooves.
Magnificent on your wooden horse
you point with your fringed hand;
the sun sets, and the people all
ride off in the other direction.
He is a strange biological phenomenon
Like eggs and snails you have a shell
You are widespread
and bad for the garden,
hard to eradicate
Scavenger, you feed
only on dead meat:
Your flesh by now
is pure protein,
or the slick bellies of leeches
You are sinuous and without bones
Your tongue leaves tiny scars
the ashy texture of mildewed flowers
You thrive on smoke; you have
no chlorophyll; you move
from place to place like a disease
Like mushrooms you live in closets
and come out only at night.
You want to go back
to where the sky was inside us
animals ran through us, our hands
blessed and killed according to our
wisdom, death
made real blood come out
But face it, we have been
improved, our heads float
several inches above our necks
moored to us by
rubber tubes and filled with
clever bubbles,
our bodies
are populated with billions
of soft pink numbers
multiplying and analyzing
themselves, perfecting
their own demands, no trouble to anyone.
I love you by
sections and when you work.
Do you want to be illiterate?
This is the way it is, get used to it.
Their attitudes differ
1
To understand
each other: anything
but that, & to avoid it
I will suspend my search for
germs if you will keep
your fingers off the microfilm
hidden inside my skin
2
I approach this love
like a biologist
pulling on my rubber
gloves & white labcoat
You flee from it
like an escaped political
prisoner, and no wonder
3
You held out your hand
I took your fingerprints
You asked for love
I gave you only descriptions
Please die I said
so I can write about it
They travel by air
A different room, this month
a worse one, where your
body with head
attached and my head with
body attached coincide briefly
I want questions and you want
only answers, but the building
is warming up, there is not much
time and time is not
fast enough for us any
more, the building sweeps
away, we are off course, we
separate, we hurtle towards each other
at the speed of sound, everything roars
we collide sightlessly and
fall, the pieces of us
mixed as disaster
and hit the pavement of this room
in a blur of silver fragments
not the shore but an aquarium
filled with exhausted water and warm
seaweed
glass clouded
with dust and algae
tray
with the remains of dinner
smells of salt carcasses and uneaten shells
sunheat comes from wall
grating no breeze
you sprawl across
the bed like a marooned
starfish
you are sand-
coloured
on my back
your hand floats belly up
You have made your escape,
your known addresses
crumple in the wind, the city
unfreezes with relief
traffic shifts back
to its routines, the swollen
buildings return to
normal, I walk believably
from house to store, nothing
remembers you but the bruises
on my thighs and the inside of my skull.
Because you are never here
but always there, I forget
not you but what you look like
You drift down the street
in the rain, your face
dissolving, changing shape, the colours
running together
My walls absorb
again, you resume
yourself, I do not recognize you
You rest on the bed
watching me watching
you, we will never know
each other any better
than we do now
Imperialist, keep off
the trees I said.
No use: you walk backwards,
admiring your own footprints.
After all you are quite
ordinary: 2 arms 2 legs
a head, a reasonable
body, toes & fingers, a few
eccentricities, a few honesties
but not too many, too many
postponements & regrets but
you’ll adjust to it, meeting
deadlines and other
people, pretending to love
the wrong woman some of the
time, listening to your brain
shrink, your diaries
expanding as you grow older,
growing older, of course you’ll
die but not yet, you’ll outlive
even my distortions of you
and there isn’t anything
I want to do about the fact
that you are unhappy & sick
you aren’t sick & unhappy
only alive & stuck with it.
Small tactics
1
These days my fingers bleed
even before I bite them
Can’t play it safe, can’t play
at all any more
Let’s go back please
to the games, they were
more fun and less painful
2
You too have your gentle
moments, you too have
eyelashes, each of your eyes
is a different colour
in the half light
your body stutters against
me, tentative as moths, your
skin is nervous
I touch
your mouth, I don’t
want to hurt
you any more
now than I have to
3
Waiting for news of you
which does not come, I have to
guess you
You are
in the city, climbing the stairs
already, that is you at the door
or you have gone, your last
message to me left
illegible on the mountain
road, quick
scribble of glass and blood
4
For stones, opening
is not easy
Staying closed is
less pain but
your anger finally
is more dangerous
To be picked up and thrown
(you won’t stop) against
the ground, picked up
and thrown again and again
5
It’s getting bad, you weren’t
there again
Wire silences, you trying
to think of something you haven’t
said, at least to me
Me trying to give
the impression it isn’t
getting bad at least
not yet
6
I walk the cell, open the window,
shut the window, the little
motors click
and whir, I turn on all the
taps and switches
I take pills, I drink water, I kneel
O electric lights
that shine on my suitcases and my fears
Let me stop caring
about anything but skinless
wheels and smoothly
running money
Get me out of this trap, this
body, let me be
like you, closed and useful
7
What do you expect after this?
Applause? Your name on stone?
You will have nothing