United Colleges - Vox Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

Page 16 text:

AS LOVED OUR FATHERS As loved our fathers, let us love old things; Grass in fields, stirred by warm winds; Leaves in woody groves whispering quietly: Rain making spotty patterns on burning ground, The glint of rivulets made by melting snow, The far speck of horizon uninvaded by trees: And put away this hour of whirring belt, The piston threshing in its steel tomb; The squeal of turning metal in the lathe, Clouds of foul smoke killing foliage, slowly blackening, Faces hungry, hammer, sickle, marching, cheering; Smells of sweat, grime, oil, and chemicals; For tears fall into rivers here, To speed far out to sea. —W. A. McKay, Theo. EVENING AT BASSWOOD LAKE Here stay for me the feverish bustling round Through many days. Let my dulled sense find Each gentle woodland sound. Here let the lazy ripplings of the tide, As on the pebbled beach its waters climb Under the chafing wind, Bring to the tired soul, forgetfulness of time. Sweet rest that follows every joyous day, Uncovering the beauty of the night To men who tire of play; Sweet coolness of the quiet-falling dusk, Absolving us from heated passion’s sway: Too much we sought delight In strained pursuits, while here our truest pleasure lay. —R. Purvis-Smith, ’39. Moore s — Open all night including Sunday [14]

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THE POETRY CONTEST This year’s poetry contest is disappointing. On the whole verse makers avoided the insipidity of smoothly turned conventional verse. But in most cases they failed to justify the attempt at freedom. Only one piece exhibited significance or distinction in either matter or manner. This may have been due to the nature of the contest. It might be wiser to define the re¬ quirements—to ask for humorous verses, for heroic couplets, for sonnets, or for poems on a specific theme. Contestants this year seemed to lack both direction and energy and there was little proof of labour performed under the discipline imposed by a sense of craftsmanship. Poetry is the intense expression of vital experience whatever else it may be. The ex¬ perience is surely among our students. Competent expression in the poetic medium seems yet to seek. An annual contest such as this may justify itself if it serves to reveal this latter fact and stimulate a desire to challenge it. The contestants may discuss the matter over a cup of tea. The awards are as follows: 1. To a Poet. 2. As Loved our Fathers. 3. Evening at Basswood Lake. Reported for the Department of English, —A. L. P. TO A POET Why do you sing still of solitude, And quiet places, Of woody slopes, a turbulent rill, Blue skies and seas, the robin’s trill, When all that I see is a multitude Of human faces? Here is the place where I must live My span of life. Is all the comfort that you can give Flee from this strife? Is there not beauty in crowds of men Of streets, of houses, and chimney stacks? Is this not a virgin forest too with Mobile vigour that Nature lacks: Then why do you leave me thus and stand Futile, alone. In the midst of green sand And sterile stone, Hymning the dead on the edge of the Promised land. —M. D. Gilchrist, ’37. 1131

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RIPE FRUIT So may’st thou live, till, like ripe fruit, thou drop Into thy mother’s lap, or he with ease Gathered, not harshly plucked, for death mature. P. L. XI. I. M rs. Atkins lay in bed, staring apathetically at the b rown patch on the ceiling, and vaguely trying to adjust her neat soul to the squalor of a back-room in a thirt-rate rooming-house. Just my luck to have a room under the lavatory. As her eyes followed the brown stain down the wallpaper, her mind sought about for an incentive to heave her body out of the bed, trying to form a plan out of a vast idleness. A glimpse of Mrs. Atkins fifteen years before this Sunday morning would have led one to believe that violent catastrophe had brought her downfall. This was not the case. Mrs. Atkins was only one of many middle-class women whose lives had ceased with the departure of their husbands and children. Back in that era known to her as “when Jim was alive,” Jean Atkins had been something of a zealot in the performance of her wifely duties. Her dusting and mopping was fervent. She outdid her wifely neighbors in lacy aprons and in profusion of rosettes on her bed-throws and curtains. Nor were her efforts devoted to her home to the exclusion of her person. In the glow of her enthusiasm, she seized upon every opportunity to make herself the Model Wife, as conceived by Hollywood and American advertising companies. She watched her diet, gave herself facials to discourage the wrinkles; was careful to cry when the cookies burned; bought negligees trimmed with imitation ostrich feathers; and rubbed deodorant into her armpits every night. Lest it appear that Mrs. Atkins was inter¬ ested only in things of the flesh, it must be added that she never missed a Sunday mass, and confessed regularly. In her more devout moments she liked to think of herself as tending her body as one would tend something foul, in the hope of making it more acceptable in the sight of God. Usually she didn’t worry about justifying her preoccupation, but just went on perfecting herself. This little idyll came to an end as idylls will. Jim Atkins, a line¬ man for the Street Railway Company, was killed while repairing some wires in an electric storm. The Company lawyer did not con¬ sider the catastrophe unusual, so Mrs. Atkins received only a small pension. Her son, a bookkeeper in Regina, showed an understandable reluctance to allow the presence of a doting mother to interrupt his [15]