Mounties laid siege to Johnson’s stronghold for fifteen hours, with bombs and gun fire but were forced to retire when their food supply ran low.
--The New York Times, Jan 4, 1932
First section:
Jan 4, 1932
I hear, collecting in triumph
of a winter siege, a frozen silence answer the steady knocks of this door. I hear
as I heard and could hear
silence explain details pure cold uncovers—
as if rushed by a thousand naïve prospectors—it knew, no,
it knows sullen smoke only means dynamite
thaws to blow me from this cabin. Look at them. Mounties, so obsessed
they talk too much: sieges have such a history
their ignorance surprises me to the marrow of my bones.
I watch them move stiffly around their conversation
planning fire, planning. Can their small fire
really deliver the shattering stars
to the crumbling earth? This is my house they hate—
as if a history of boiling oil
pours itself on the snow, with the steam rising.
as they expect me to retreat, or give up.
When I built this cabin without nails
metal was forged and beat out with the steam—
metal created only for the Savage 30-3-,
the Ivor Jonnson shotgun, my .22 Winchester.
I knew I shouldn’t have lost my pistol.
They will attack soon.
Final section:
Feb. 17, 1932
The Eagle River stretches
until it breaks a white pallor,
shred roaring its own fall. When I move torn muscles
and grab this painful warmth, veins surg granite cliffs gripping my hold,
my holding.
Death, stretching out in heavy snow
is sanity here.
I still reverberate the explosion of a thaw, a gun shot, the river breaking
into the heart of winter.
I barely hear snow silencing chaos
and muffled movements of my veins:
the screams this landscape voice
are only my brilliant arteries breaking up and flowing downstream
over the frozen current.
*translation
and I have picked up the letters no one reads, letters they take along
to all the shores of the world until they lose them
translated by Robert Bly,