15.12.18

Vancouver Writing: George Stanley

Verlaine's Ride on the 99 B-Line

The Broadway streetscape framed in the bus window
reels backward, halts, recedes again,
turning shop signs to stuttering banners,
as solitary walkers retrogress.
Phone wires & trolley wires loop & cross
with the strange allure of a signature.

The reek of wet clothing, the growl of the diesel
over the fast pulse of its idle
(like the muffled roar of a captive giant),
then suddenly, all around, crows cawing.

What is all this to Verlaine, who sits quietly
in a side seat, the unread Province in his lap,
transported by a vision? - a white form,
a sweet, insistent voice addressing him,
while he, in response, murmurs the syllables
of a Name whose cadence quells the bus's rumble

- George Stanley from Vancouver: A Poem