Read Online Circle Game by Margaret Atwood - Free Book Online Page B

“Migration: C.P.R.,” we must return ourselves to fragments, bones, and salt seas.
    The sense of negation in the last poems, however, cannot be mistaken for nihilism. The reduction of self to its elements bears no relation to the tense weariness in “Eventual Proteus” where the lovers are little morethan “voices/ abraded with fatigue”. In terms of voice, image, even form,
The Circle Game
ends by answering the challenge of “This Is a Photograph of Me.” There the speaker promised that if we looked long enough we could see her. In “A Place: Fragments,” we are told that eyesight is insufficient, that “An other sense tugs at us”. The alternative to circle games is
    something not lost or hidden
but just not found yet
    that informs, holds together
this confusion, this largeness
and dissolving:
    not above or behind
or within it, but one
with it: an
    identity:
something too huge and simple
for us to see.
    Sherrill Grace is the head of the English Department at the University of British Columbia. She teaches modern and Canadian literature, and specializes in Canadian Cultural Studies. She has written widely on Margaret Atwood
.
    the circle game

This Is a Photograph of Me
    It was taken some time ago.
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;
    then, as you scan
it, you see in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.
    In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.
    (The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.
    I am in the lake, in the centre
of the picture, just under the surface.
    It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion
    but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.)

After the Flood, We
    We must be the only ones
left, in the mist that has risen
everywhere as well
as in these woods
    I walk across the bridge
towards the safety of high ground
(the tops of the trees are like islands)
    gathering the sunken
bones of the drowned mothers
(hard and round in my hands)
while the white mist washes
around my legs like water;
    fish must be swimming
down in the forest beneath us,
like birds, from tree to tree
and a mile away
the city, wide and silent,
is lying lost, far undersea.
    You saunter beside me, talking
of the beauty of the morning,
not even knowing
that there has been a flood,
    tossing small pebbles
at random over your shoulder
into the deep thick air,
    not hearing the first stumbling
footsteps of the almost-born
coming (slowly) behind us,
not seeing
the almost-human
brutal faces forming
(slowly)
out of stone.

A Messenger
    The man came from nowhere
and is going nowhere
    one day he suddenly appeared
outside my window
suspended in the air
between the ground and the tree bough
    I once thought all encounters
were planned:
newspaper boys passing
in the street, with cryptic
headlines, waitresses and their coded
menus, women standing in streetcars
with secret packages, were sent to
me. And gave some time
to their deciphering
    but this one is clearly
accidental; clearly this one is
    no green angel, simple black and white
fiend; no ordained
messenger; merely
a random face
revolving outside the window
    and if no evident abstract
significance, then
something as contingent
as a candidate for marriage
in this district of exacting neighbours:
not meant for me personally
but generic: to be considered
from all angles (origin; occupation;
aim in life); identification
papers examined; if appropriate,
conversed with; when
he can be made to descend.
    Meanwhile, I wonder
    which of the green or
black and white
myths he swallowed by mistake
is feeding on him like a tapeworm
has raised him from the ground
and brought him to this window
    swivelling from some invisible rope
his particular