Willows Revisited

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59with old words revived and carrying a new burden of moaning. Swivel, for whom all time seems to exist only in the past and never in the present or future is therefore specially inclined towards the use ofwords which are obsoleteBecause of his ability to reflect upon the lives of great men and the heros of the past, Swivel has sometimes been compared withSarah Binks. But there is a vast difference in theirapproach. Sarah's poems, even when they deal with historical figures, always carry with them the verve and vitality of the contemporary scene. Historically Sarah was often enough at fault. The pterodactyl, for example, which she summons out of Saskatchewan's geological past, was never actually native to that province, but for Sarah it shareswith the birds she personally knew and had studied the snearthand the halleluiah-bird their joys and troubles. For her, Vesuvius,the Mound-Builder, though he must have lived in the very dim past,was nevertheless a contemporary in his concern for the condition ofthe roads and his opposition to the government. She has the happyability to pluck an historical figure from the past long dead, and to re-endow it with life and vitality. Time for her is always the living present, but for John Swivel it remains forever in the past. For Swivel it is a dimension which has disappeared leaving behind only its vague Imprint and its sense of being lost in the eternal moment. One need only look at his famous poem, The Great Man, his tribute to the Honorable Srafton Tabernackle, or rather to his memory, to see this exemplified.
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60The Great Man was written on the occasion of Swivels last visit into the city of Quagmire, his cabin is on the far western outskirts of the city, and because he has to walk, he seldom gets into the heart of the city itself. But on the lastoccasion we are told that he stood for a full hour in a lightdrizzle with his hat removed before the statue of the HonourableGrafton Tabernackle - lost in contemplation. It is an oddstatue and it is quite possible that the citizens of the latepremier's birthplace who subscribed - or at least partiallysubscribed - the moneys to erect the memorial to theirPremier, will be better remembered because of it than will theone for who it was erected."Partially subscribed" indicates the zeal and the abilityof the citizens of Quagmire to honor their fellow townsman whohad reached Saskatchewan's highest honor. It was originallyintended to have the figure done in bronze on a scale of threeto one so that it might dominate the entire parking area in frontof the Municipal Kali) but when it was found that the funds raisedwere insufficient to meet the original design, a compromise waseffected by having the top half of the statue done in cast ironat the local foundry on a three quarter scale, the rest beingdone by local labour in in concrete, the scale being left to theartistic ability and the good intentions of the contractor in charge.Some criticism has been leveled against the statue, chiefly on the grounds that there is an obvious discrepancy between the scales of the two halves of the statue. This may or may not bevalid �it is impossible to make a proper check, the premierhaving been too long dead. But critics have also complained
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61that the arc light which was later extended from the top of the head was an artistic mistake regardless of what it could do for the parting area., and that the whole thing now resembles nothing so much as a home-made boudoir lamp of the amateur hobbyist without the shade. But such criticisms are generally considered by the majority of the citizens of Quagmire to be political in origin and certainly John Swivel was not moved by them. His poetic spirit is concerned only for the Great Man himself;He was a great man in his day, He strove, appropriated, bummed, and stole, He saved his cash for a rainy day � They stack him now beneath the mold; They stack him on a mound of dirt, Alone he stands in cast-iron shirt: Alone, alone, in marble pants, The Great Man views the sun's last going, Oblivious that chiselled glance � Daisies are waving, violets growing � But what knows he of wealth or fame, Nor all these things within his leaving � Pigeons have erased his name And far beyond all care or grieving, He stands alone, who once was great, Cast-iron, stoney �inviolate."Marble pants" of course, is sheer poetry. The statue ashas been pointed out is not marble but concrete, but it givesthe impression sometimes of being marble in view of what theschool children have done to it with colored chalk, and Swivelmakes full use of this opportunity to pay his hero even greatertribute.John Swivel's life was never one of ease. The sale of tombstones often involved a long and patient search for prospects, and he travelled from farm to farm. As a poet he was always welcome; moreover he frequently "helped out" with the chores and the farm work in return for what was in those days a simple and even primitive hospitality, Many a night he spent on the earthen floors of
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62the lean-to attached to the sod house or the tap-paper shack and he has seen farm, life change from the early days of the four-horse binder at the reins of which the farm wife as often as not took her turn, to the coming of the modern combine gang from Oklahoma and Texas who move across the border ana sweep the field clean over-night leaving everything ship-shape for the farmer to go to Florida. And Swivel frequently looks back to those early days, and we are given glimpses of them. They are not only of days on the farm but also of schools and schoolings where education and discipline was more rigorous then it is today, �when, for example, the trial of Warren Hastings was one of the highlights of theschool reader and when geography and history and "parsing" hadnot as yet been blended into the more flavoursome stew of social science. And we are never sure in reading Swivels poems whether he approves or not of the many changes which have taken place, tie seems to look back with a certain fondness and a nostalgia amounting almost to regret. But time, being what it is for John Swivel, invariably takes over and enfolds the good as well as the bad within it;infinite capacity. Even knowledge, so hard to come by, has no abiding worth; we are told, is one with the many acquisitions and treasures of life "awaiting the inevitable fire" and, like them,passing into rust;lt matters not how little we discern,Nor yet how much, about the future day, The sum of all the things we used to learn, Has since been gathered up and swept away:The cotyledons, and diaecious flowersThe cotyledons, and diaecious flowers, The products of New Guinea and Sudan,The men who dug the well in fourteen hours, The ten terms of the Treaty of Siam, The tracing and erasings and the pastings, The parsings, and the bushels in the peck, The impeachment and the Trial of Warren Hastings, Have left that attic set above the neck.
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63And all the information we acquire,Is like the clippings, magazines, and string, Awaiting the inevitable fire,We light in June to celebrate the spring � Like nails and nuts, and hook and hinge collected Unsorted and accumulating dust, And kettle with its handle disconnected � So passes all our knowledge into rust; It matters not what wealth of bolt and bottle, we've put aside, or, straining, stocked the head � That trove of trash, that lore of Aristotle, Is never wanted 'tilt its gone, or dead.Swivel can not always have been so lost in time's poetic embrace. The sense of futility which pervades so much of his work seems to have grown with his increasing success in the sale of tombstones. But in his earlier days he must undoubtedly have taken a certain reserve I and cautious joy in life even to the extent of admitting on occasion that it was good. Certainly the poem which has come to be known as Wood indicates as much. Perhaps his fondness for physical labor may explain it, for he was fond of any work which made nophilosophical demands upon him beyond the somewhat somber satisfaction of being helpful. In Wood, a poem which incidentally harks back to the days before electrification in Saskatchewan when all the cooking and whatever there was of heating was done with wood only, he makes a case for a farm wife who is finding her lot hard. Swivel points to the joy of common effort and calls attention to the fact that although she might find little to laud in her husband, in the matter of wood "at least he saved it."WoodHapy the man who calls life good, And rising bucks three cords of wood, And says, "how good.' How good to live, With this here wood �how good to give Of this my talent and my strength, By cutting it in proper lengths".
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64So too, the one he calls his wife Is happy who can say of life, "At least 'tis cut, and I'll admit it, Now all I have to do is split it, And seize each passing pause and jiffy, To pile it high against the biffy, And comes the winter tote it in, And cart the ashes out again, And though to me he rates no plaudit-Say this for him, at least he sawed it.Seme of that attitude of resignation which later characterizesso much of Swivels work can already be discerned in Wood and one isalso made aware of an endless cycle. But on the whole it Is morecheerful than most of his poetry and his reputation would not havesuffered if he had written more like It, But then he might neverhave become The Great Dean. For in the end his place in literaturesomething ofrests upon his ever closer approach to being^a Saskatchewan existentialist. His increasing preoccupation with the impermanence, if not actually the meaninglessness, of all things, and his emphasis upon the futility of all directed effort would lead us to think so. Certainly he seems to be departing from that quiet appreciation of the crowded horizon against the western sky and the gophers singing their way into our hearts as expressed in Omniscient Plan. But it may also be merely an intensification of his gas on the stomach. One never knows about existentialists. For say what we will, Saskatchewan is still in his blood and like all his fellow poets in the School of Seven, he cannot escape the cow. In fact, no onehas excelled him in cow-symbolism. In Behold these Monuments the cow finally becomes the ambassador of time itself. Surely nowhere in all literature has she been led as high. The wheat may spoil, the hill may be leveled and the proud elevator may fall �but where the cow has come "naught remains." Wraltha Dovecote's infinitely sad and nostalgic "Hast Milk to Spare" in which
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65the cow Is said to represent her departing youth is considered by many to be the last word in the use of the cow motif inSaskatchewan poetry, but in Behold These Monuments the GreatDean has gone her one better;Behold These MonumentsBehold these monuments to all our moll, Yon silo that contains the salted hay, And these, the stacks, uplift with cumbered toil, Defiant thrust, will some day pass away; And even wheat, hard won from stubborn soil Is not secure against time's certain chase, For what the Wheat Board cannot sell will spoil, And what is left the field-mice will erase; And cows, ambassadors of time, will someday load Themselves with silage until naught remains, And prairie winds the high-flung stacks erode, And leave man but a memory for his pains; For time, who fells the elevators pride, And levels hill wherewith to fill the slough, Will say, "Mark no achievement cut and dried, Just two year's drought �and where the hell are you!"
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66WRAITHA DOVECOTEThe Exotic WraithaWraitha Dovecote, the sad Wraitha, the exotic Wraitha, the broken-hearted Wraltha, the ever-beautiful Wraltha Dovecote. One never knows quite where to place or how to classify this charming poetess. From the standpoint of Saskatchewan she never seems to altogether fit in�farms, fields, elevators mean little to her. Where she touches Saskatchewan soli, and it is rarely, she does so lightly like a butterfly touching a flower. In all her poetry there is not a single grain of wheat. But prairie winds breathe gently through her lines and the dust that falls upon her memories is a prairie dust and the leaves which descend upon her heart in what she calls "the pale, cold twilight of November" are those scant few of the treeless plains which we can almost count. Moreover, she has written about the cow and she has written well. John Swivel and his "time's ambassador" notwithstanding, her brilliant HAST MILK TO SPARE is undoubtedly the finest cow-poem In all Canada.Wraltha Dovecote is the only daughter of Mercy-Me and Thomas Jefferson Dovecote, a family of United Empire Loyalist stock who moved from Ontario to Regina during the drought years. Her father who had a limited capital at the time bought up Saskatchewan land which in those days could be had for a song, and when he died during Wraitha's infancy he left his wife and daughter with an adequate income. On her mothers side Wraitha traces her ancestry through her U.E.L. forebears to Puritan Massachusetts where a great, great ancestor, God-Help-us Bittersweet, a devout and mild-mannered cranberry farmer of that state married a Mohawk princess,6b
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Kitchee-Kitchee-coo, or, to give her name its English equivalent, Sitting-Duck. Kitchee, as she was known in the community, proved on repeated washings and to everybody's surprise to be exceedingly beautiful, and when, at the age of twelve, she presented her husband with identical twin daughters, she was relieved of her duties of picking cranberries, and she devoted herself to raising her two children. They were christened Mercy-Me and Glory-Be, names which in the course of time became family names which were usedinterchangeably since no one was ever able to tell the twins apart. Actually Wraitha's names are also Mercy-Me and Glory-Be but she proved at birth to be so frail and wraith-like that her mother added the name Wraitha which still seems to suit her better than either of the other two.There is no doubt that Wraitha owes much of her great beauty and some of her disposition to Kitchee-Kltchee-coo. She is tall and long-limbed and dark with a haunting quality in her eyes which one associates with a sprite in the woods. But her expressionhas become saddened. She became aware of her broken heart earlyin life, at the age of twelve, in fact, when her mother refusedto let her get married. And although her heart has since healedand been broken again repeatedly, each break has left its mark, mightand they might indeed have destroyed her entirely had her sorrows not found an outlet in her poetry. The Mohawk gene in her blood is dominant in more ways than in her beauty. Kitchee-coo, we are told also led a sad life under the careful eye of her husband, and it was only during the cranberry-picking season that she was ableto sing with a free heart.Wraitha and her widowed mother, who is still comparatively young and correspondingly handsome, live in a comfortable home in one of the better residential districts of Regina. From their upper windows they can see Wascanna Lake. Their front yard is
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68surrounded by a high iron fence with a heavy ornate gate, also of iron, whichclangs ominously when opened and closed by the postman. Betweenthe fence and the house are two large trees, a weeping willow andan evergreen .carefully trimmed to resemble cypress. There is a large marble urn between the trees and this is kept filledwith dead leaves and the grass is deliberately left uncut, the wholestudied effect being one of studied neglect. The neighbors in the blockused to object to this somewhat unusual landscaping, but sinceWraitha has risen to fame they have come to regard the Dovecotehome as a kind of museum piece and are proud to live beside it andto show it to their friends when they come visiting from Manitobaor Ontario. In the back yard, however, which is not visible fromthe street and is enclosed in high boards, Wraitha and her motherhave built a tiled patio, and have Installed anoutside barbecue, a portable bar, a small nook for sunbathingand a plastic swimming pool.Wraitha, with the exception of Professor Bedfellow, has thebest education of the School of Seven. Following her highschoolshe entered St. Midgets and in four years as well as an equalnumber of heartbreaks she received her degree in Home Economics,magna cum laude. The result of her greater education shows to advantage in her poetry; she uses better grammar and she tends towards a lighter touch and a greater sophistication than the other members of the Regina School. But she has made little use of her professional training. As one of the outstanding graduates in Home Economics she has been given repeated opportunities to demonstrate cake-mixes or cosmetics or to model bathing-suits, but she has always felt that her talents lay in the field of poetry,particularly since she was subject to attacks of broken-heartedness and felt that she might as well make use of that also. Moreover, she was
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encouraged In this by Professor Bedfellow under whom she took her English at St. Midgets. Bedfellow repeatedly referred to her there as a poet of great promise' and although some of her classmates at St. Midget's and later some of her neighbors in Regina maintain thatthe great promise was not altogether literary in character and, point, in confirmation to her close and continued friendship with her former professor long after all examinations had been written, it is very doubtful whether the lovely Wraitha and the Piltdown Man share anything except a common interest in poetry. It may even be that the very contrast in their poetic attitudes draw them together in a kind of literary wonderment and that they are genuinely and objectively interested in each others work because they do not understand it. They are certainly poles apart in their literary credos, and if Bedfellow tolerates Wraitha's poetry at all it is only because her regards it as an expression of her intense femininity, something which Wraitha admits he does most thoroughly understand although she is unwilling to admit that he understands anything else.In her high school days Wraitha was already trying her hand at poetry, and although her early efforts tend to be trivial and flighty they are indicative of her later talents. One finds in her scribblers fragments such as,Oh worra, worra, worra,My love is no more true,Last night, and again tonight,He caught me out with you.She wrote such light poetry as I'M A BOBOLINK and LOVE IS WILLING:
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I'm just a little bobolink Bobling in the brook, And in my little bobling suit, The boys all look.I'm just a little butterfly Flying for butter, And all the butter and egg men Help me flutter.I'm Just a little goose girl, And all around are geese �And what I know of gandersIs mostly grease.LOVE IS WILLING.VLove is sweet and willing But all too soon forgets, The end of coo and billing Is nothing but regrets; The end of loving briefness Is only rue and longing, Now who'll assuage my griefness, And who'll undo the wronging.They are not particularly good poems but they have charm, although suitable only to be recited at class parties and at school graduation exercises. She did in fact win the school prize for poetry with MOTHERS SONG which she recited in the course of her address as class valedictorian. Like all beginners she tended to imitate, even to the extent of plagiarizing complete lines, and she was no doubt greatly influenced by Sarah Binks's LITTLE PAPOOSE the poem in which the Algonquin mother feeds her Infant. Wraitha here has the Algonquin mother complimenting herself and her child on being the proper shade of red, a matter concerning which she appears, according to the young Wraitha, to have hadanxieties. It is apparent here that Wraitha's knowledge of the Indian nature, despite her own distant ancestry, was at second hand and that she was reflecting herhigh-school point of view. The Deputy Minister of Educationwho awarded the prizes that day is said to have chucked her

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