Ode Re: the Compelling Wind by George Elliot Clarke Aloft, afloat, I ride jet streams—and contrails— Glide eagle-strident, dreading no downfall. Sunlight burnishes—gilds—my sprightly wings, So flighty, so suavely anti-gravity! Who doesn't yearn—wish—to be wind-buoyant? To be Daedalus or Superman, sleek, Fleet, tentatively Infallible— As brisk and nonchalant as the wind? Or as dismissive or as insolent— Or as breezy and jumpy—as the wind? The invisible and chilling pressure— Poltergeist-shapeless, yet dense, dissolute Resolution—of airy Nothingness That yet drives me forward or blows me back, Is still April (sans pareil), the freshest month, Yet augur’d anew in each august gust.... In my tinny cylinder streaking east— Turbulence-accosted or coasting free, I live out Liberty's teeter-totter— Or wild April's refurbishing buffets— Invigorating Relativity. (Spy Einstein's tousled hair, wind-troubled, wind-joyous!)
George Elliott Clarke was born in Windsor, Nova Scotia, in 1960. He was the 4th Poet Laureate of Toronto (2012-15) and the 7th Parliamentary/Canadian Poet Laureate (2016-17). An English professor at the University of Toronto, Clarke has taught at Duke, McGill, UBC, and Harvard. He has received the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellows Prize, Governor-General’s Award for Poetry, National Magazine Gold Award for Poetry, Premiul Poesis (Romania), Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction, and the Eric Hoffer Book Award for Poetry (US). Basta!
