United Colleges - Vox Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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ecem I was walking home in the sunset, I was walking west. I felt the breath of Christmas come, Come lightly over me. I had sifted the other seasons That were sodden saturnalias, I had stared at the tinsel lights Making the darkness dark. I remembered the sugary scents Of succulent fowl and solid puddings requiring fat sofas. I heard the songstress sighing Dying carols on the screen. I knew them now for seances Of slumbery satiety. My step sprang softly from the fine snow, My breast heaved with new life from the cool air, And the street lamps shone with significant light. I looked up to the bare branches of the elms Which veined the lower reaches of the clear sky Like Shakespeare’s ruined choirs. The organ psalm of the sparrows and the westering hum Entranced me. Currents of sound and light and song Lifted my gaze to motions higher, Higher above the rooted choirs To the cloud windows in the west Streaming with lights of dusky mauve, Panes of translucent yellow-blue, Fretted with scarlet gold. On higher yet, supremely higher, Beyond the golden fire, My sight is borne and fixed In perfect adoration Before the beauty of the baby Moon, Alone, not ready for attending stars Or angels’ jubilation, A lambent silver Arc, Laid upon mildest blue, Signal of things to come anew. —A. E. Spalding 29

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s. now The wind howled around the door today trying to enter; I didn’t let him have his way so in defiance he swirled the snow against the pane in tiny whirlwinds of white; he piled the snow up high by the barn and dressed the fences in damp white lumps of wet snow, and all the while he fought the pane trying to get in at me, trying to get in the cabin, but I out-foxed him — I burnt the cabin down. —Valerie Isaac He exists In a cardboard shack, With a broken window Stuffed with paper; Waiting for death. Here, In his narrow world He is free from everything. The people that despise him The taunting children And the world that passed him by. Not dangerous, Nor obnoxious. Only, A hired man Not worth hiring. —Dempsey Valgardson —Keith Black d Lost W)o IQovnovnbor Upon the ridge, the sun its fingers drew, At men who on this day were going to die; While in the valley, hidden still from view, The foe lay waiting for the battle cry. And as the sun continued ’cross the sky, Th’impartial earth lay waiting tense and still, And then the heavy shells began to fly, While man in ignorance dug in for the kill. Now years have passed, and on that very hill, The daisies grow where man once gave his life, And yearly now, the world remembers still And nurtures yet the hate that caused the strife. For man in all his strength has not yet learned To fight the cause, the effect of which is spurned. S, OCl !ety yninns O no Cramped On a metal cot His thin body Looks jagged and broken. His face, a time-worn map Of blotches and a thousand veins. Each blotch a drunken battle lost Each vein an empty bottle. He sleeps, And when he doesn’t He works, Just long enough For the price of one more drink. 28

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I stand on an abyss and scream into the silence; if only someone somewhere would turn and listen try to understand the tortured agony that is tearing me in two; but there is no hope, there is only dread and the tortured tearing certainty of another day, another round in the interminable cycle of life which runs around me as I stand still in the silence trying to fight free but! it’s no use for the cycle runs around me quickly surely for it is so very much older than I; but still I stand trying hard to stop to reach out and grasp something certain yet not stereotyped and stamped by a decadent society a grotesque civilization repulsive in its very civilized existence; the abyss stretches before me and around me a yawning tantalizing cavity which arouses in me a curious demanding dread to know what it would be like to slide down its sides forever and forever; to feel the smoothness rushing past silently like the sound of hummingbirds’ wings beating against threads of air; this curious dread makes me scream to know but it’s all silent and there’s no use for the cycle circles slowly and certainly preventing me from taking the step that would send me hurtling down into the depths of hell, but still the curiosity consumes me so I scream, wanting to be stopped wanting to be driven to the final step without, the courage to do anything but stand screaming on the edge of Time. —Valerie Isaac Jliac Cgregor Scattering 9 s In distant, blissful Eden, When the Lord created man, He set his heart aforetime On a certain chosen clan; But as Hebraists could assure us, The Lord had second thoughts, So destiny descended On the immigrating Scots. You’ll find them on the seven seas And the Road to Xanadu, ’Mid frozen wastes and burning sands (Winnipeg or Timbuktu!); Like sand by the sea for multitude, Outward from John O’ Groats. Some call them immigranites, And others call them Scots. Where the great Mackenzie River Goes meandering to the sea You’ll meet them speculating In some Indian teepee; They’ve had Mohawks for half¬ cousins, Even in-law Hottentots. Some call them immigranites, But others call them Scots. Though they doff the kilt and sporran To don despised troos (Tell it not in Gath or Glasgow), They still mind their P’s and Q’s; They’ve been known to cross their bridges, But never burn their boats. Some call them immigranites, They call themselves — the Scoats. When Gabriel sounds his bagpipe, And they throng the golden street; When the pearly gates are opened And brithers brithers meet; When the sheep are all admitted And they’ve weeded out the goats, You’ll find the new Jerusalem Populated by — the Scoats! —A Scot 30