MERE ISMAN RARUINIE PAIDERSAITER SUT PREVIEW AUGUST 1943 THE RAT HUNT P.K. PAGE The man's beautiful strong foreign voice floating upward on the fat evening air slowly drew the occupants of the neighbouring buildings to their windows. Living within arm's reach of each other, yet strange, not having spoken, they were now linked by a common interest in the activity bolow. It was not yet quite dark; leaves were blurring together, violent in their green as they are just before darkness. In a corner of the yard by the rain barrel a cluster of them stood out black and detailed against the light of a torch. There the man stooped, his white shirt glowing; a band of fair almost plastic hair hung forward as he swung the beam of light left and right. Carefully, with his other hand, he moved the thick bushes with a stick. Behind him, anxious, curious, unafraid, a woman watched closely where the light played, while two cats, flat, as if dropped from a height, lay at her feet. e Directing the beam behind the rain barrel the man spoke--the diffic"I got heem ulties of his accent smoothed by the even spacing of his words. now. He iss here. Not so beeg afder all. He iss trapped now." A high squeaking began as he spoke. Motionless, unexcited, he spoke again. "Bring Blagkie here to heem." The woman bent for the larger of the two cats; picked it up with her "Good Blagkie. palm on its loose slipping belly and put it down by the barrel. Ketch heem." Blackie, large against the sharp and illumined foliage, foward as an arrow, sprang suddenly against its bow, away from the squeaking; capered in the yard, a circus animal, "Ah, he iss lazy," said the woman looking at her good-for-nothing cat with affectionate displeasure. The man was nearer the barrel now, he had stooped lower. With his stick he was trying the distance between the barrel and the wall--measuring, not hunting, showing neither emotion nor pleasure. He made controlled and careful movements with his arms, the phosphorescence of his shirt smudging in the half dark, the light held steady in his hand. Small and intent, the woman stood, waiting her turn to help; a reserve strength, knowing that in a moment she would be called on to behave as he, adequately, without hysteria. An enormous silence lapped, almost as if it were the hot air, on the watchers in the windows. They were now no longer isolated people but partisans, inactive only of necessity. Silence covered them all, held them. Nothing but the sound of the stick hitting the wood and the high terrible squeaking of the trapped rat broke on empty ear drums. "You are giffing me anodther steek," said the man, "smoll one," and his voice though quiet shocked them all into a terrible attention. Promptly the Discarding the first woman obeyed, hunted one in the yard, went forward with it. he tried it between the barrel and the wall. It cleared. "Hold this," said the man. He handed her the flash light and she leaned with him, both of them still like runners before the gun, holding movement back behind the tight walls of skin. His face must have been very close to the rat as he stooped. Straining against the thickening darkness the tiered figures watched as the man raised his arm and brought it down in hard clean strokes between the barrel and the wall. page two For a moment the squeaking filled the night--loud, high and desperate. Then the arm moved again. One; two; three. There was finality in the third stroke. A slight movement in the windows, a low murmur, showed that the watchers knew even before the man bent and said, "He iss a very smoll one," and propped his stick against the wall. The windows emptied then, but for the lowest one. Inaction was quick "Them rats is a to produce apathy, boredom. But the janitor's wife remained. trouble," she said and the man looked up, aware of his audience for the first time. "They are more few now," he said. And then, swinging his body very upright, he leaned his arm along the clothes line and said, "I am not lying to you. When we come here three years now, there were tousands and hunreds of them. I don't know why I'm keeping those cats for," he laughed. "I am doing their work for them. They are now jus' lazy pets." Blackie came forward, hit the rat with her paw, tossed it, jumped on it and tumbling and rolling took it off by the woodshed. "Cats is nice to have though," said the janitor's wife. "Especially with rats about--the dirrty things." Her face was only a blob at the window, fat and pale. The man's wife spoke. "We cover our garbage good, so they have nothing to eat in our house. We like to hef it glean.' "Oh, I can tell you're clean, right enough," said the janitor's wife, leaning her soap-textured elbows on the sill. "You only have to look at yer porch to tell that," she wente on in a soft moan. "We're funny that way too. have things clean. If you've got a clean place, then you have nice We like to people." Proudly, almost arrogantly, all garrulousness gone, she said, "Cleanliness is next to Godliness." The man stretched his arm further along the clothes line, as if reachfor his words. ing there Very thoughtfully, meticulously, he picked them up. "Cleanless is half hell." A short silence fell as they grew together in understanding. "My husband wants to know, are you a Russian?" the janitor's wife asked of the man. Stretching his other arm along the clothes line, his white shirt only a smudge now, the man looked like a strange melting scarecrow speaking with a foreign voice as he said, "I am a Hungarian." 'A Hungarian!" exclaimed the janitor's wife. "My husband thought he heard you speak Russian one day and he wanted me to ask. My husband is a Russian. Incredulous, her voice like a bobbin, the man's wife came forward. "How can ou know what he say?" "Ah," the other woman laughed now. "If I can't use my mouth I can use my hands." Yet the two women eyed each other with an acceptance containing asat the lot of the other. tonishment "He hear me spik Polish, I expec," said the scarecrow. "I spik Polish pretty good. When you learn the language yong, then you spik it fast and it good." you spik The Russian joined the conversation for the first time. He stood submerged in the shadows behind the sill. "Polish is li-ik Russian. I think I hear you speak Russian. page three It was soft and warm and very friendly now. These four grew expansive with the falling night--grouped and close. "You have a real good accent," said the janitor's wife to the Hungarian as though she wanted to say something personal and inclusive. But they realized then, all of them at once, that what she had said was not a compliment, what she had meant as praise was worded as criticism and they laughed freely, spontaneously; treir laughter streamed like light and joined them in the darkness. Quickly she sought to make amends. "What's an accent anyway," she said gently. „Just listen to mine," and she exaggerated it. "You have no more than me. Mine's Scotch." "Netional"Eccent makes no difference," said the woman in the yard. ity is no metter. There are good people everywhere." It came very solemnly and seriously. "Ah sure," said the Scotch voice. "There are good people everywhere. that's what I always say. People are good everywhere." Suddenly the janitor began to speak. Not stopping for breath, pushing his way to the sill and leaning on it, he said, „Behind the barrel there is a hole, maybe. Behind the barrel there is a hole and the rats maybe go in that hole from the yard and through that hole goes our furnace room. There is no hole anywhere else. In the wall 1 feel and there is no hole. Behind the barrel there is a hole maybe and there they go." He was intensely excited, having found the answer to the rats. The man moved, dissolving. Flashed his torch behind the barrel, forming again. The light caught his shirt, the fair hairs on his arm. With his stick he felt the wall, then with his hand. Carefully he examined the woodwork, the cement. "There iss no hole," he said. "But we will watch where they get in. "I We will have to do this thing ourself. He snapped off his torch again. don't know what I am keeping those cats I could gif them away easy," he for. said, "easy. They are not good for wot they are for.' It was almost too dark to see now. Their eyes were beginning to hurt Playas they still strained to trace each other's shapes against the night. fully, as a child might, the man turned on the torch again, flashing it this time not on the barrel but on themselves. The four of them were lighted sharply, bound together like figures on a medal. Just as suddenly he turned it off and'the janitor's wife spoke very softly. "They is nice things to have around, though, cats. Cat's isn't only for killing rats," she said. A new quality had come into her voice as if she had discovered something very important. "Cats isn't only for killing rats," she said again. "There's traps and poison can do that just as good." DIVERS P.K.PAGE Remet, the pair, double in water wet and dyed with leaves under the sun; sailed on themselves, silken and twice one, four with love-- nailed to the shot self. Spoke and their voices echoed to far cornersvoices river clear and waterlily cool steered them like oars to thoir stoep onormous futuro; while not yet free of tho delicate reflection, feet in the shallows still, they became sixtheir shadows huge on the massed bank in projoction. page four SHIPBUILDING OFFICE P.K.PAGE Tho strange jargon of ships and thoir building floats very lightly, like flotsam in heads stormily holding the perilous oceans of love: they are like children at desks their farthest eyes tracing the angle of a first flight and their nearest ones reading with uncanny accuracy and no perception contracts for hawser wire boilers and cable. This girl in gingham, shy as a traitor her face hardly emergod from the dive of childhood rides the clock with spurs through ship and dock; unrelated as fable to nineteen-forty hor job, her jargon or the permanont carbon fixing eight sets of everything angrily upon paper. TWO POEMS... MIRIAM D. WADDINGTON THE LOVERS The pale net of her hair blowing in spring Will not shut out the world Nor will the green knee of season Bend to his will. But these two Separated by the field of growing wheat And several cities, still inclino to cach other And from their distance merge Slight and brief as clouds touching. THE CRYSTAI When I step out and feel the green world, Its concave walls must cup my summer coming And curving, hold me Beyond all geography in a transparent place Where water images cling to the insido sphero, Move and distend as rainbows in a mirror Cast out of focus. And this crystal chrysallis Shapes to green rhythms to long ocean flowings Rolls towards the sun with sure and spinning spoed, And under the intensely golden point Warms, expands, Until walls crack suddenly Uncup me into large and windy space. PLAGUE BURIAL The bright matrix of the brain contains a box to put one's values in: the work well done a bargain fairly made, virtue rewarded with fat satisfactions. An oblong box, say five feet and a bit to hold the bones on this side of the scales. Who weights the values on the othor side may weight to no end, it may bo there's nothing adequato to bones gone dry. Although the box is made spocifically these bones are no less fond (and bones no more for garments gaily donned). An empire's lamentation for all theso ducal bones; for all these duchesses who fondled thom, no less, with fond caress. The drawn blind, the silent house. The fat mouse nibbles a cheese equal in kind to coronets worn well, equal to the tolling bol. that travels over refuso hoaps and restaurants. And cafe noir is comforting no loss, no less a value hailing from Brazil for pounds and ponce and ledgers fat as cheose. Weovil in a groen-rot green-rot weevil, know he is a green-rot for good or for evil. The drawn blind, the day that does not broak. Tread silently lest someono wakc to sense the peaco that passoth hore. Handlo the creaking hingo with foar and into tho yard tread softly over by the chickon coop dig us a holo, say fivo foot and a bit. A close fit, 'twill closer bye and byo. Thore is no need for too much sky for bones. Spade and gravel grate. A hen squawks like a throat torn open. Hurry! It grows late. A.G.BAILEY pago five page six WE THE PEOPLE We the people living on every mainstreet in the world, loving the moonstone and the violet, answering to Joe and Chung and calling to Joan Ramona Sasha y Alvarez of Martiniquo and other suburbs wosther platinum hair, her young mouth red with botol, and her eyes floating London, Shanghai, including the islands. We the poople praying by tho Gangos, fixing a car on Sunday, flicking a lever, fishing in the North Soa or the Back Rivor, and scrowing something on to something olso on the assombly lino, or turning the praying pillars of Tibet on the brown plateau: this labour of ours covers the whole world, which turns also amongst comots and shooting stars, in its orbit. We the poople being everywhere except we do not organise (although that is beginning, that is boginning now), being wonderful but rarely quite ourselves and capable but do not try too much, have had as property no more than this a lonely exit, a private death in evory public ward fashioned by fear, by pain made sumptuous. But just suppose a lucid science mated with delight, a hope was farmed, a joy collectivised, and teachers brought the flowers to the people, soldiers the people to the flowers. Would not everyone like lovers wear the world and time grown round be grasped, and globes display the short way home? PATRICK ANDERSON page seven THE AMERICANS PATRICK ANDERSON It is like this in a summer hotel: you go out along the dusty road and climb past the outlying hamlets until you are nearly as high as you can be, with the St. Lawrence stretched out below you, or you are bathing in a mountain stream, or maybe just reading under a bunch of thistles in a cow meadow, and then it's time for lunch or dinner. You pay for them, so you might as well eat them. Soupe aux pois, steaks and pie. In the evening you hear the train from Quebec. It whistles as it rounds the cape and turns from its track along the sea into the palegreen water meadows. It brings mail, newspapers and visitors. It whistles again at the station. As you walk back you see clouds of dust in the valley below you--taxis and buggies coming away from the train. The angelus is ringing. Three times a day there's the hotel dining-room, the tables scrupulously fresh and clean, the white walls and big windows--the atmosphere is quite different from that in the rest of the hotel--and everything presided over by the single waitress, Rita Tremblay, a girl so poised, dignified and distant that you would never believe she had said, the other night when I happened to pass her in the street while walking next to the proprietor's niece-'Couchoz âvec!'- in a tone at once passionate and contemptuous. There's the diningroom and the necessity of appearing respectable. If it wasn't for this, one wouldn't have to shave at all. The sittingroom is too dark for anyone to notice and, besides, the visitors are rarely to be found there. It's as though you emerged, three times a day, into a glaring publicity, into a sort of forum for the discussion of the world's events. You return from wrestling with a landscape into an atmosphere at once nervous and electric, where you must meet people, and not only local people but people from far outside--people even from Montreal and Toronto. A rhythmic intrusion of people, that's what it is. A return to speaking English also. For the local inhabitants with their foreign half-understood language, resolving itself into cadences and arabesques of sound, and their ignorance disguised in an idyllic simplicity, are almost assimilated into one's personal landscape. Fóreigners, they inhabit the foreign and mysterious land of oneself. Their speech, with all its ambiguity, opens out into gulphs of half meaning and association that have the music and connotations of verse. Among them you put on the French gestures and ceremoniousness without the grammar. poetic world of connotations and grimaces, carefully avoiding the subjunctive. Of course most of the visitors are French. They are priests and commercial travellers. One of the priests is a botanist. 'We have here in the garden a very rare plant,' Ninette explains to me. 'It is the only one in the whole province of Quebec.' But when we look for it she can only show me a dulllooking green stalk. 'M. l'Abbe must have picked the flower,' she says. 'Each year he comes to see it. It is a very rare plant indeed.'... The other priests are not so scholarly. Redfaced, with a suave curve of belly under their black soutanes, they may be seen mopping up the gravy on their plates with a piece of bread. They belch happily and sit after dinner on the porch, their crosses dangling over their well-fed stomachs as they watch the street with serene eyes. Often, if they have arrived early for the meal, one may watch them meditate, striding like athletes up and down the porch, their boots tramping the wooden floor, their robes fluttering. They disappear around the corner of the house and page eight then come into sight again, pacing the narrow space between the rocking chairs and the balustrade. But in the course of the summer there is, naturally, a succession of English-speaking visitors. On the first evening you catch their voices in the dining room. Some of them try to speak French to Rita. This little group of people, the women in white summer dresses, the men with their sports coats and white and tan shoes, are capable, in that first unconscious encounter, of the most apalling self revelations, the greatest possible amount of snobbery or insensitivity or mere cold exclusiveness as they read the menu, drink their soup and comment on the paintings (For Sale) which adorn the dining room. According to your mood and their behaviour, you speak French in your attempt to retain your isolation, or you are very much English in the hope that you will be able to strike up a friendship with them. And this relationship, beginning perhaps with a faint nod over the olives or in the hall afterwards, develops along certain general lines until the last picnic is followed by an early morning departure by taxi. There is the visit to the woodcarver's cottage opposite. The new people have seen it from the diningroom, the vermillion spinningwheel and the signboard with its two habitant figures. They have bought some paper knives, a pair of bookends and a hooked rug. They have also acquired a lurid wood-painting, a colored bas relief of sleighs, snow and houses with the steep ouwardswinging Quebec roof. They undo the tissue wrapping and show it to you and the mother says, 'It will just go nicely over the fireplace in father's den. It's very colorful, isn't it?' She holds it up and you walk backwards, head to one side, head to the other side, appraising it as though it were a major work by Cezanne. 'Yes. Very colorful,' you say, continuing to look at it in the desire not to hurt her feelings--peering at it from every possible angle in fact. And you have this obsoure sentimental impulse: you wish it were good, you try to make yourself believe that it is good, if only because you want this beautiful landscape to produce something worthy of itself. The woodcarver provides an opportunity for the initial recognitions to blossom out into a real conversation, the first conversation in English for, perhaps, three weeks. Yet the visitors are often dull and sometimes shocking. For. instance, the two Americans. The hotel was positively aching for Americans; the large imitation brick annex had been built specially for them, no doubt with the money they had themselves contributed in past years. But gasrationing had ruined the tourist trade from south of the border. These were the first Americans any one had seen this year. Scarcity increased their aura, the casual god-like American look, and war made them even more olympian--they were post Pearl Harbor, bathed in the light of history, more than lifesize in a great democracy's new found strength. Add to this that they arrived with a large movie camera, that they came from New York and that, as we soon learned, they had actually been Guests of the Canadian Government the year before, and you will realize how impressed we were. Peggy wanted to meet fellow citizens of hers, I looked forward to talking about movies and scenes to shoot in the vicinity. For Mr. Donalds (we got to know this too) was a wellknown amateur camera man. His documentaries had won a number of prizes. They strolled onto the porch after dinner and we inserted ourselves into their immediate neighborhood. Mr. Donalds was a man of about forty, tall and running to fat, with sandy hair and complexion. He had, or so it seemed to page nine me, an American face. I don't quite know what 1mean by this, except that his face looked clean and noble--but cleaner than it was strong, and more hurt than dignified. There is something a bit pampered about certain American faces. The impression they give you is similar to that you might receive if you saw a Greek athlete eating ice cream, or a Roman senator wearing pince-nez. Mr. Donald looked--well, a bit hurt. Or as though his dignity might be hurt. Something like that. As for his wife, she was prematurely grey and even homely. Her eyes were a cold blue. Her irregular features and grey hair gave her a motherly appearance but, come to think of it, she looked a bit hurt too. We soon got to talking and the Donalds spent the whole evening with us. We drew up rocking chairs and talked and the moths jittered the porch light over our heads and from the garden came the creak of the iron swing as Rita conferred with her boy friend. The usual quietness descended upon the town, broken only by noises of moth and swing, the banging of the screen door in the little drugstore opposite or a buggy going home to the upland farms. It was past midnight when we had done with talking and walked together down the long corridor of the annex, leaving the Donalds at their door. Yet we never spoke to them again. Not except for a brief word on the last morning, over a week later. For as the talk drifted from movies to New York, from Canadian scenery to the dim-out and the deserted streets, we had got onto the subject of negroes, and after negroes we had got on to the subject of Jews. Mr. and Mrs. Donald were hurt about them both. They explained themselves with a sort of pained earnestness, a rather overbearing patience--they were both school teachers. The fact was that the war had had an unfortunate effect upon the colored people. They had gotten above themselves. A picture of Harlem in sex mad revolt was conjured up out of the peaceful country night, a Harlem of slashing razor-blades, raped girls and unbearable arrogance over which hovered, of course, the unmistakeable negro smell. They claim they can smell white people too,' was grudgingly admitted. 'It's no joke,' was the way Mr. Donald put it, 'It's no joke at all,' and his voice had the scholarly bitterness of a man who was perfectly, even pedantically, aware of the pros and the cons, the statistics and the theories, but who nevertheless had come through to his own well-documented conclusion. 'It's no joke at all, 'They're perfectly all he said, and his wife bore him out. Gravely and sadly. right in their place. But now...' She shuddered, as though in spite of herself. What bad luck Mr. Donald had had with the Jews, many of whom they both numbered among their best friends! The Jews, a musical, in many ways a gifted race. Not, of course, American, but colorful, talented, connected irrevocably with the Bible, and so on. What a pity there should be that bad streak! Had we heard that President Roosevelt was really President Rosenfeldt? Had we heard about the Protocols of Zion? And here was a Jewish story to end all Jewish stories. Mrs. Donald told it because it had happened to Mr. Donald and somehow it wouldn't have been so effective if he had told it himself. It is better for the suffering to remain silent and look embarrassed. Well, Mr. Donald had been driving quietly along the Henry Hudson Parkway. He was a careful driver. Suddenly a car stopped in front of him, without warning of any kind. He jammed on his brakes as hard as he could but he couldn't pull up in time. He hit the car ahead with a mild but unmistakable bump. Immediately afterwards there were four more bumps in quick succession. The four page ten cars behind him had also mildly collided. His back fender was slightly damaged. Everyone got out of his car and it was then that Mr. Donald found to his horror that he was surrounded by five vociferous families of Jews. The owner of the car in front together with the owners of all four cars behind promptly sued him for damages. And he was innocent! He hadn't been at fault at all. Appealed to, he drawled a confirmation of his wife's story, his plump sandy face puckered with injured innocence. Perhens we shouldn't have continued with the argument. Perhaps we should have gone for a walk, up the road to the three trees and the fox farm, the wheat fields tawny in the moonlight, the electric crosses flaring on the hills. Maybe we should have sought out Ninette and taken her to one of the cafes. But, anyway, we went on talking, isolated there on the front of the verandah with the garden melted in shadow below us. We explained'our point of view: we said that none of the colored people we knew smelled, and that all our Jewish acquaintances were just as nice as all our non-Jewish acquaintances. We were quite objective, we based our opinions on what had been our experience. And thus, bit by bit, our conversation grew more and more political. It was then that Mrs. Donald began to single Peggy out, as an American and fellow countryman of hers. She was more hurt by Peggy than she had been by the Jews or the negroes. She rose to the occasion like a suffering mother addressing a wayward child. I think we had been talking of war and peace, of anarchy and economic planning. Mrs. Donald, who had already accused us of being 'idealists' with a mournful shake of the head as if she had really meant drunkards or criminals, remonstrated with Peggy. 'I really cannot understand,' she began, 'how you, a nice American girl from a decent family, can speak the way you do. You've been brought up in a real American home and yet you say all these un-American things.' And, shaking her head once more, she smiled--a smile emphasising the utter incredibility of any decent girl's holding liberal opinions, a smile expressing a bewilderment beyond tears. Then, as though from an infinite wisdom she were producing a beautiful ethical truth: 'You know, you can't change human nature. Why, there'll always be wars. There'll always be some people who are rich and enterprising and those who are no darn good at all. Of course there will;' She fell to nodding at Peggy, baffled at the awful prospect of anyone's believing that you could actually change human nature. She reminded Peggy that she had been brought up a good Methodist, had attended Sunday School, had learned the American way... That I should have such views she could understand better, she said, giving me a glance of an altogether different kind, a glance almost rakish, for I was an Englishman, 1 had clearly 'been around'. She made me feel like some kind of a wolf Soon after this we parted for the night. We creaked together along the corridor of the annex. A little later I heard the water run in their basin and the chink of toothbrushes. 'So these are our two Americans,' we thought as we also got ready for bed, 'two real fascists, anti-negro, anti-Jew, isolationist but oh so firmly loyal to human nature!' The cameraman who had never seen Spanish Earth or The River or Night Mail, and his blue-eyed schoolmarm wife. As I thought about them, I began to wonder if that look of injured innocence were not really an essential adjunct to a subconscious assurance of guilt. Weren't the Nazis always feeling terribly hurt about something, and wasn't pago oleven enti-Semitism a substitute for a feeling öf suppressed shame with regard to his own business and social ethics which the business man got rid of by directing against someone else After that we only saw them in the diningroom, when the rhythm of the day required it. In that atmosphere of camaraderie and light they appeared increasingly suffering and melancholy. The weather was their new grievance. 1 It wasn't proving favorable to the moving picture apparatus. Baie St. Po didn't apparently offer them the kind of shots they required. As a matter of fact, they never went farther afield than the square in front of the church. And the language--they didn't know French. As I said, we didn't speak to them again. Except once. It was on their last morning and the taxi was at the door as we were going into breakfast. Something, I think it was the sentimentality inherent in a holiday made us turn and say goodbye. Anyone leaving Baie St. Paul deserved one's sympathy, we felt. And, illogically, anyone bound for New York possessed a sort of glamor. For a moment, in fact, they were The Americans again. But we didn't wait to see them off. As the taxi left in a cloud of white dust we were busy ordering breakfast from Rita--orange juice, fried eggs and coffee, in jubilant French. FOR R.A.S. . (1925-1.943.) Ho quit tho country that ho know by heart, Shawbridge, Piedmont and the Tremblant runs, And climbed to the centre of war by his own trail. Barred from the easy virtue of enlistment Ho fought a private battle for his chance to sharo the world's crisis. On his way to the scenes of death, he met death. Death reached out with an cagerness that matched his own. Death violont, Atlantic, submarine. The challenge so absolute was met absolutely. It was as though there was special noed to attend To this boy's daring, as though if his will survived We should survive too easily, win with too sudden success, Win without undorstanding the fulness of our penalty. Ho bore in his single hand the ossence of our tragedy. I tell you no one anywhere brought more than this, Not the comrades who stood shoulder to shoulder at Stalingrad, Not Buorling, suporb in his skill, Nor tho noted heroisms in the hoat of battle. Rosults aro not tho measure of thoso doods. I writo of him bocauso he wishod to write, And because he had time only to pour The tablo of his contents on the historic water. F.R.SCOTT page twelve HILLS OF ANGER PATRICK WADDINGTON For all aliko tho time bomb at the wrist Ticked to a quiet revolution; now With war's iron fingers laid along our pulse Fades the slow sound of self. Oh long ago The dark ones came and thoir insatiato Hunger wo fod, watched grow, Opposed too late. Not now, not of this time but forward looking Striding the hills of anger like a beam Thrown from the unclasped sun, our wishes' vanguard Coming at last to love lost publicly And found again in moasure For allman's treasure Opens the gates of boing for our children Who, with a stature tall boyond our own Climb through the mists that shroud our povorty. Whether in gap-toothod Europe whoso doomed citios Blossom unnatural colors in the night Or England with her buttercups and daisios Covered with slag of coughing industry Or gasping Asia or tho sky Blackened across Amorica Tomorrow is unvanquished, the incomplete Shake at the world as the wind shakes at a trec, Tunnel through mountains of their old defoat. And those that fail, those who board a train That stops at nothing's station- damp tho fires Blow up the tracks, strike across country Or better still, return Ignoring signals, to tho main tracks of history That point like flaming fingors through our death To that far frontier where we may discern Homos of the untroubled laugh, the untortured breath. NOTE Wo believe our readers and subscribers will be interested to hear of a new development. For some time past the PREVIEW group has been discussing the position of poetry in war-time and the possibility of appealing to a wider public. We have decided to attempt to solve this problom by the publication of a subsidiary which will be printed in the thousands and distributed, probably frec, to factories, schools, bookstores, newstands etc. This new publication is THE VICTORY BROADSHEET and will be edited by Patrick Anderson. It will contain poetry of a simpler, more popular kind than that usually obtaining in the parent magazine. It will also, if and oducational nature. The money is forthcoming, include prose of an expository general idea is 1) To bring poetry to the people 2) To stimulate morale by explaining the issues of the war and the problems of the peace in terms of Canadian history and life. The No. 1 lake one of these broadsheets. Pin ir up in zour kivingrom, kitchen, bachroom, workbench — any place you like. And tel us what you think of it. ROADSHEE DI Published under the auspices of PREVIEW Magazine, dedicated to the support of Canadian morale. SUMMER 1943 NGS NAR by PATRICK ANDERSON And fear is a rot in the hearts of the simple. Song For United Nations O rise to repair this American evil The war-song of America And the thirty-one wounds in the spirit of Lincoln. Is blowing in the prairie wheat, The ringing anvil forging steel Wartime Blues Is the bass that follows it; What you doin’, what you waitin' for? The soldiers take the music up What you doin’, what you waitin' for? Until it flings about each head, -Jus’ waitin’ for my man to come back from war. Like fairest flag it flies above And gently lies upon the dead. My man’s gone west cross de wide wide sea, Killin’ and killin’ to keep his children free, In China as in Canada Got him a uniform, got him a gun, This freedom's music lifts and soars, Taken along a life to give for everyone. For long in Britain loud and clear, It bursts from the embattled shores; My man’s gone east and lef' de corner store, Above the weary centuries, Lef' the backporch and the folks next door, Above the failures and the fears, Lef' me alone in the big double bed A tune that has the common touch Lookin’ at the news where I used to see his head. Unites our hearts and hemispheres. East or west, my baby’s gone away, Russia replies with roar on roar I look in de closet and see geography, From humming plant and burning soil, I see de cloes belongin' to a man No worker but is proud to hear That’s snappin’ up Sicily or pocketin’ Japan. The sound of triumph in the toil; North or south, he sure is far from home, This anthem rings in Polish ears He done gone an’ lef' me alone While echoes break from tortured Greece, But maybe a black man is goin’ be the guy This is the people’s end to wars That gives Adolph Hitler a big black eyel And this the soldiers’ will to peace. What you doin’, what you weepin’ for? Come in guerillas from your camps, What you doin’, what you weepin’ for? Commandos from your shades come in-Ahm weepin’ for my soldier to win dis war! Come in you wretched from your slumsLet in the French! Let Norway in! Song For Canadians Open the ranks for India's hosts Until the chorus sweeps the sky— You know it’s mighty cold up here United Nations on the march On top of the Western Hemisphere, That Life may have the Victory! With lots of space and loads of snow And not many people and much to do And a war to win— An American Thinks Of The Race Riots I guess it's quite a big job In Detroit And Elsewhere Being a Canadian. Thirty-one dead, can we number and name them, Now first in the business of keeping free Is a tough little problem called unity— The people at war and the nation divided, We’ve got to unite like winter and snow, Shall we tell to our allies or bow to the Fuehrer Who gave the example, Or maples and syrup, or Russia and Joe, Shall we heil to the Hitler whose country provided Those in Quebec . . . with those in Ontario. The technique of terror Yessir— if we WANT to be free, Which we do. To sever the people? Our honour is low and our system derided. It’s fine up here with the snow drifts swirled Thirty-one dead. In a war— can we tell it?— Around the farms on top of the world, While under your feet is the USA We strike in the home and we kill for the colour, And the darkeyed girls down Argentine wayWe warp in the heart and we twist in the spirit And race is our riot, It's sure important up here in the north With the shortest route across the earth— Detroit is our London, Wearing a glacier in your hait Our Stalingrad, Rostov, our Chungking and Hongkong, And cooling your feet in Niagara— Ourselves made the ruin: And yet I think it’s an awful long way We kill in the centre, our friends know our fury, From Halifax to Vancouver Bay Our enemies listen. If you’re NOT united. Thirty-one dead. And many more broken In battles of bridges and sieges of theatres, Yet there’s one thing bigger than Canada The ruined for life, the terribly beaten, And that’s this thing called a People's War, With blood clots for eyeballs A struggle of Catholics, Protestants, Jews, The Eskimo's kid and the Indian's papoose And shadows for peopleAnd our friends in Britain and ChinaWhile this terrible thing rolls on like an ocean To the Southland and Harlem It’s mighty important cause if we lose And over the border— We won’t get help from Hitler! Hysteria paid by the haters of labour. There’s a pioneer’s job up here in the frost Bury the dead, with the bells of the people. And that’s shaking hands and shaking them fast, Gripping them hard and going together Care for the sick. If you can, you must heal them. Their bloodstains are blotting the Constitution And fighting the foe as we fight the weather, And the national marbles Getting it over, completing the thing— Are torn by their terror, Then a people’s peace like an early spring. The VICTORY BROADSHEET, edited by Patrick Anderson, is the simple and boisterous offspring of a graver and more advanced parent — PREVIEW, Canadd's literar Please address all enquiries relative to either magazine or broadsheet to Kit Shaw, 5593 Cote St. Luc Road, N.D.G. A year’s subscription to Previe way, we are planning to have our next broadsheet especially suitable for work in the schools. punren at CaumniDcR 2 month I FREE