Friday, 5 August 2011

From a poem by Peter Trower

Sunlight pulling up stakes
in late afternoon--
peeling back from the peaks--
letting shadows slat down
into the scree-shattered valleys
of old Slumach's broken land
where once he stalked wild as the cliff goats--
found the mine no man would strike again--
toted out the gold that fired a legend--
drank himself deranged in New Westminster--
took a white whore for his woman--
slew the man who sought his secret--
died with it in the Queen's gallows
leaving just his angry ghost to prowl
those devil's clubbed wastes luring
greedy unwary searchers to disaster

etc. 

(From "On Pitt Lake Dike" in A Ship Called Destiny)

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