First I selected the Pound from a Free Library while on a walk with the dogs. Then as we passed again I went beck for the Homer.

"For he has only just got back from abroad, and from a region so remote that one might well give up all hope of return once the winds had blown one astray into the wise expanse of sea, which is so vast and perilous that even the birds cannot make their passage in the year."

from Telemachus with Nestor

I often pick  up different editions of titles I already own,  especially if they are older editions by well known publishers. I enjoy reading different introductions and or notes for the same works. I also enjoy the sense of engagement with the past. The name in the top right corner indicates they came from the same person. And that person seems to have keep them for some time. Sadly there are no annotations. 

"All night, and as the wind lieth among
The cypress trees, he lay,"

from Speech for Psyche in the Golden Book of Apuleius

We looked for Pound's grave when we visited Cemetery Island in Venice. But it was a crowded graveyard and we settled for the grave of Igor Stravinsky.

"I had not thought death had undone so many." T.S. Eliot

Reader Rock Garden

"the shadow of
a mist shall yet
with but the time
this granite fret"

from Sky Spindrift
by James Wreford

We were very daring and went to the Reader Rock garden to see the flowers and have lunch with a friend. It was nice to experience some semblance of normality.

https://www.calgary.ca/csps/parks/locations/se-parks/reader-rock-garden.html

Meer

 

"where there's a wall
there's a way
around, over, or through
there's a gate
maybe a ladder
a door
a sentinel who
sometimes sleeps
there are secret passwords
you can overhear"

from Where There's a Wall

by Joy Kogawa

No cabin but some critters at the Calgary Zoo.

"This land like a mirror turns you inward

And you become a forest in a furtive lake; 

The dark pines of your mind reach downward,

You dream in the green of your time,

Your memory is a row of sinking pines."

from Dark Pines under Water

by Gwendolyn MacEwen

On our trip thru the Canadian Wild we thought the wolves were pacing the confines of their cage, but it turned out they were stalking each other in a game of fur and shadows.

 

 

And now for something completely different.

Photos, Canadian Poets and the image of the farm

Ten miles from anywhere eighty years and more,
Where the frozen roadstones grind iron shoes and tires
     And the timberwood’s last stand
Lives only in brushwood and long memories,―see,
The new-peeled posts are marching, the taut wires
     Sing to the naked land,

Sing to the valley of slash and beaver-meadow,
The stone-pocked fields and bog-born stunted alders
     And the black hills rising sheer
As mountains of iron and sand round the Genie’s castle
(The age-old view of eyes that each November
     Look back on a wasted year)

from Gentleman's Farm 

by John Glassco

Clouds

One thing I love about being at the farm and especially at our cabin just up the grid is the sky. Clouds and the weather in general just fascinate me. So here are some photos taken at the farm the night before we left to return to Calgary. 

"There is no thunder in her hair,
upon her lips no rain,
yet world and weather through that door
have come alive again,"

from Six Songs from a Play, First Song
by Patrick Anderson

Crow in Calgary

"Go on, wild voice; the world's in need of singing

A sort of dead of winter holds the heart.

The climate's changed." 

from Upon a Bird Singing on Parliament Hill

by James Wreford

One thing the hand of Time shall spare, For the grim Idiot at the gate Is deathless and eternal there.

"cattle and horses browsed around

derricks and pumps.

I braked the car when a mare and colt

wandered onto the road.

They stared at me, and I thought,

here is the past, looking at the present.

Then I remembered that grass will come up

when the wells are stuttering straws

in an empty bottle."

from Meeting on Asphalt

by Bert Alnon

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alta-oilsands-monitoring-1.5673433

The deal says no fieldwork is to be done on the main branch of the Athabasca River. That means the program won't fund monitoring downstream of the oilsands even as the province considers proposals to allow the water from oilsands tailings ponds to be released into the river.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/alberta-nwt-chiefs-losing-faith-environment-monitoring-1.5674446

Subject line is from Archibald Lampman's "The City at the End of Things"