POETRY: ROBERT HOGG

PRESAGES

        (from a Sixth Floor Apartment
 
 
    1
 
Earth is not easy

to get down to



 
 
civilization is all

up in the air



 
 
a matter of building

one thing



 
 
on top of another

stairways



 
 
                          the stanzas

of this poem
 
 
   forms   in   the   air



 
 
    as though space

were a convenience to slide on
 



 
    as though the mind

were as liquid as this



 
 
distance
 
 
        down to the earth
               below



 
 
    2
 
In the cities of the damned

the air is so thick

the veins stand red against the eyes



 
 
Grey forms of the living

walk about in the fog
 
 



dead dreams of investors

hang like a haze in the air
 



 
The rest is forced

underground, flushed

into rivers

           as though the mind

did not follow it

to the sea
 



 
    3
 
We have entered a time we cannot believe in

it has come upon us so late and yet so fast



 
 
            In any other time

            we might have called this

            the age of the soul
 



 
where business is no longer

a matter of property

but of what

properly belongs



 
 
            Noli me tangere

            is a necklace the earth wears
 



 
O civilized man

take your cold hand

away
 
 
 

   
    4
 
flesh

      of the earth
 



 
blood

     of the sea
 



 
breath of wind
 



 
               mind

     of fire
 



 
come home
 
 

 
 
    5
 
Is it a fish or psyche

flops upon this beach
​
thinking to drink the air

"Presages" first published in Standing Back. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1971

Robert Hogg was born in Edmonton, Alberta, grew up in the Cariboo and Fraser Valley in British Columbia, and attended UBC during the early Sixties where he was associated with the Vancouver TISH poets and graduated with a BA in English and Creative Writing. In 1964 he hitchhiked east to Toronto, then visited Buffalo NY where Charles Olson was teaching. After spending a few months in NYC, Bob entered the graduate program at the State University of NY at Buffalo, completed a PhD and took a job teaching American and Canadian Poetry at Carleton University in Ottawa for the next 38 years. He currently resides at his farm fifty miles south of Ottawa and is working on four collections: Lamentations; The Cariboo Poems; Postcards, from America; and The Vancouver Work. His publications include: The Connexions, Berkeley: Oyez, 1966; Standing Back, Toronto: Coach House, 1972; Of Light, Toronto: Coach House, 1978; Heat Lightning, Windsor: Black Moss, 1986; There Is No Falling, Toronto: ECW, 1993; and as editor, An English Canadian Poetics, The Confederation Poets – Vol. 1, Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2009; and from Lamentations, Ottawa: above/ground, 2016. Two Cariboo poems, Ranch Days – The McIntosh from hawk/weed press in Kemptville, Ontario, and Ranch Days—for Ed Dorn from battleaxe press in Ottawa have recently been published (2019).  He recently edited the April 2019 Canadian poetry issue of the Portland Maine Café Review.