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CBC LITERARY AWARDS

For over 20 years, CBC Radio has celebrated the best of Canadian writing talent. For a third year enRoute is proud to sponsor the CBC Literary Awards / Prix littéraires Radio-Canada by publishing the winning texts in English and French.

The views expressed by the writers do not represent the views of enRoute, Spafax or Air Canada. Certain readers may be offended by the contents.

Second Prize
Poetry

AMAZONIA
BELÉM
AT ILHA DA FAZENDA
THREE POEMS FOR THE RIO XINGÚ
YELLOW DOG

Text: JAN CONN

1 | 2 | 3 | AUG '04

BELÉM

for Pedro Hernández-Abad
The first aphrodisiac I tried was from
the Ver-O-Peso market–not
eye of dolphin or the powdered genitalia
of the giant river otter–
but some herbal drink, bitter and nauseating.
I was feverish, my face
bland as a cloud.

Nothing came of it.

Later the same week
on a dare I ascended all the worn stone steps
of the Basilica de Nazaré, my head tilted
to one side, whimsical, but something
took my breath away.
Something shone in the peacock sky
and my breath was stolen.

Nightwind in the jacaranda, the hiss
of traffic along the avenida,
a baker opening and closing his heavy
oven door–

My mother sent me here from her deep dark places,
sent me because she couldn’t endure,
old ghost, her story over in 1976, but
I won’t follow, I tip my straw hat
to her, watch her dust
settle in the mango trees.

Thinking of the sculptor José Pinto, whose only record in Santarém
is a bronze of a king vulture, 1927
that once stood atop the Teatro Vitória, since demolished,

I pick up my notebook
and stroll with the Rio Tapajós,
alongside a large white egret enthroned
on a floating island of water plants,
the creamy blooms nodding and bowing
as they must have done
when the last Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro II
sat for his portrait here in 1854.

Now the vulture resides on a black wooden table
at the Centro Cultural João Fona,
holding on, with pinched scaly feet,
to a small bronze replica of the world,
where, for all I know, Dom Pedro still rules.

I recall near Manaus an alligator
penned behind wooden slats in a foot of water, barely
room for his plated body-plus-tail.
I imagined each day his golden eyes
sank a little lower.

A lone live chicken hanging from a stout stick
was lowered near his mouth.
One lunge and the chicken was history,
the stick in splinters.

A few feathers floated on the dirty green, oil-stained water;
the alligator hid himself, brooding,
his black heart and mine
a little blacker.

Through the rivermist flocks of electric green parrots go
and the tide comes rushing in: big, bold, cold,
grey, in a hurry to arrive, in a hurry
to depart.

So the morning is summoned:
the little rose-pink shrimps gleam in their trays
in the open market;
on my silver tray I gleam too.

One morning in February in the hot white rain
alone in Praça Baptista Campos
surrounded by the distant demeanour
of late 19th century English landscaping–the gazebos,
miniature bridges, everything so constrained
and diminished, at least to me,

I called upon the god Anhangá,
I huddled beneath the lone brazil nut tree–

and a single blossom drifted down, turning and turning…

Life-size cardboard figures from the 1920’s,
men in straw boaters, women in long swishing skirts,
stand outside As Docas on the grass,
and the mauve flowers from the orchid trees
fall silently, swiftly among them.

They follow us into the street, ask for our hats, our
handkerchiefs.
They stroll around the Teatro da Paz
in yellow shoes
and look for everyone who’s been lost.

Nights they wander through ruined houses,
and I travel with them,
our eyes of blue neon resting nowhere.

Under the hot sapphire sky
at the cool hem of the Atlantic
in 1616 the Portuguese arrived, in the name of their crown,
wearing leather and metal,
swords and helmets, and founded Belém. They arrived
and kept on arriving…

Margaret Mee travelled here when I was four,
her small feet firmly planted
in the footprints of Richard Spruce and Adolpho Ducke.

Now I stand overlooking the glinting water,
slick and moon-shot,
same night wind at my back, same moon

continued...

1 | 2 | 3 | AUG '04