Monday, August 22, 2011

For Jack

I was shocked and saddened to hear of the death of NDP leader Jack Layton this morning. I was in transit back to London, ON, and felt cut off and hopeless, and particulalry disturbed, as I often am, by how the world conspicuously "goes on" after such a great loss. But despair is the last thing Jack Layton would have wished for us  at this time, both as a nation and as individuals.  The final words of his letter to Canadians are deeply moving: we must try to view this moment as a beginning and not an end.  Jack Layton showed Canadians that change is possible, and young people must respond to his call and work to make this country the very best that it can be. Though already quoted extensively, I wish to include the end of the letter here, along with some words of my own, as a humble tribute to a good man.




"My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world."







For Jack



The world didn’t notice
(Or so it seemed),
Crisp with a fall tinge,
Sun rising same
Over this country,
All fields and rocky ground and water,
Touching green and brown
In angles, flatness, curves,
In blueness and grayness of sky
After rain and raging of heavens,
Now quiet, with a streaking of clouds .

The world didn’t notice,
Waking foggy and oblivious,
No bowed heads of attic shepherds,
Garlanded, weeping with higher poetry than this.
On the farms they let out livestock,
Looked on what was done and what was left to do,
Elsewhere, the cities shone,
In hurried motion through sun-gold streets
Burnished rails, automotive clatter,
While glass buildings show the
Same, vain sky, in all her apathy…

The world didn’t notice, but
The people did.

Standing in a coffee shop
(in Wingham, Ontario)
All nasty from an early bus,
Crinkled purple ten for a cup of steaming tea,
I heard the crackle of a story on the radio.
The floor opened up as I waited
For change,
Hand open feebly,
Staring into an abyss of
Cheap grey tile.

There was a hole in the middle of me
Because I had been jubilant,
Hopeful, and irreverently happy
With the ecstasy of revolution.
I felt love in the middle of a
March of millions, smiling,
Heard singing in the tower
And those old, stone halls.

And there was a hole in the middle of us,
Bound ‘round a centre that could not hold,
Fell, but did not go gently,
Feared the spiral into coldness and chaos,
The crumbling of an edifice.

But instead,
I see a nation pouring out of doors,
In mourning, not in black
But in a stream of colours,
Distraught, all weeping
But still fighting
As you fought.

And though the hole will not be filled,
(It may heal and be covered,
Never filled),
Our hope will scaffold what we built with you,
With the electricity of joy—
Love, to hold each other up,
Many tongues, all speaking peace,
So dignified, becoming worthy
Of your shining words and kindly acts.

So let us rally and love and remember
And fight the good fight
(For goodness more than worth such fighting),
Until we overcome.

When the bottom of the world fell out,
And I was waiting for change,
I looked outside,
And the world noticed you
Speaking in us,
And was glad.