The Revenant by Evan Jones
PN Review 176, July - August 2007
The Revenant
1
'My bags are not packed,' the revenant said,
'and all my maps to stars' homes are aflame.'
More difficult to recognize, he'd lost
all the sad etcetera of the wrong
and his toothbrush changing planes at Lutan.
Still, I left him at the bus depot, where
swallows, sickened of this year, had laid down
their feathers in protest. Turning away,
I imagined him as underdressed
as those swallows - his birthday suit torn at
neck, knee and elbow. And I was sick of
this year. Hadn't it been endlessly hot?
And to cool ourselves, hadn't we only
rain - thick layers of it falling as if
poured from a bucket twice daily? Yes, the
time was right to leave him. Later, he thrived
in hearsay - the barricade of feathers
erected in the bus toilet along
the road to Shawinigan for instance -
but back then my only concern was flight.
Where to escape the revenant, and why,
came later, with an understanding of
my inability to leave behind
anything. Today, at my door, with a
milkcrate full of Northern Soul records in
his arms, some roses and their phantoms in
his teeth, I welcomed him out of the rain,
both of us slowing just enough to rest.
3
The revenant described to me her dream:
'It was there you slept, and while sleeping dreamed
deliriously of your childhood bed,
single and unmade. Your dreams were like this,
living without forgetting, every
memory of frost and drought directing
the mind to higher concepts. Hmn. Trying.
The archangel Michael arrived in stride,
his arms akimbo. You dreamed him speaking:
You've written lines and lines without any
irritable hankering after fact
or logic. Now? I give up. I'm afraid.
I don't know if you're a tragedian
or surrealist. I don't know. And there's no
one left to find you in Etobicoke,
no one but the dead books already here.
But what the archangel actually said,
Be happy, was interrupted by my
early-morning tapping at your window.'
Was it a wish or a counterwish on
the revenant's part? A vatic dream?
Painted inside me, her image,
the revenant, just for a moment,
Mother, Mary Mother, I could believe
in God without loving Him, but could I
love without believing? The archangel
shook his finger, vanished; the revenant
stood up like a bolt of lightning, dumbstruck:
'O my sweet springtime, let's just get away.'
5
The earth rings the bells, the sky rings the bells,
God rings the bells, returns the dead to life.
We were in the seven-hilled city, my
apple-tree and I, when he knew a tale:
'Have you heard this one? May twenty-ninth,
Tuesday, fourteen-fifty-three, a monk in
Constantinople was frying fish when
told that after a two-month siege the City
walls had fallen; the Church of the Holy
Wisdom had been claimed for Islam by
Mehmet the Conqueror - who had showered
earth on his turbaned head before entering.
The City was overrun with Turks, but
the priest replied this was as likely
as his half-cooked fish jumping from its pan
into the nearby spring. The fish then did.'
The faithful are travellers swimming in
holy springs, less careful of each other
than fish, less kind. May twenty-eighth, fourteenfifty-
three, the bells in Agia Sofia ring:
four-hundred sounding boards, sixty-two bells.
One day later, a fish returns to life.
'Is it so unbelievable, after
all these deaths and lives, I am yours again?'
We are less careful of each other, where
in time understanding should grow, less kind.
10
Stubbornly the revenant repeated,
'I desire to be free from marriage
and I invite assistance in bringing
this about.' Her previous lover,
a janissary in the employ of
Ali Efendi, took the news badly
and slowed his heart rate until he appeared
dead to then modern medical methods.
She attended his mock-funeral in
a Nudie Suit and never cried once,
offering her virginity as dowry
afterwards to our Lord Jesus Christ.
But He was well aware she sermonized
while pointing to her crotch and winking.
I managed to get my fingers in there
once or twice while we ourselves were slowing
and O the things she stopped me from doing,
a leg in each hand - I would surprise her when
my lips found bare breasts or her little stomach.
She never let anyone play with her breasts.
The janissary burned or buried alive,
God deceived and rewarded me again.
11
metaphysical despair and caresses that turn him inside-out like a glove
René Crevel
I am trying to remember a dream:
The revenant held my arm in his hand,
cried out for Miss Rodeo Canada,
and fell asleep in the Lord. This being
the kind of thing he liked to do, it came
as no surprise. But a shock and a twinge
held in the muscle, like being bitten,
diagnosed by some rheumatologist
as RSD or maybe neurosis,
which I knew to be regret for the loss
of heaven, a spasm and a shudder
meaning, 'It'll never happen again,
this world, once seemingly unified, now
divided. With the revenant you go.'
I'd gotten as far as Glasgow when he
rose from the dead, confused equal of God,
trampling death upon death, sister, brother,
granting life to those in the tombs, seducing,
corrupting, and insulting everything
before him. My arm ached. Why remain still?
'Don't be afraid. I don't blame you much for
wanting to be free,' in Scotland, where he
confused Nina Simone and PP Arnold,
the roar of pain alive in my solid arm.
15
The first thing God created was the journey. And then came doubt...and
nostalgia...
Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy.
At night your gift, the revenant, is not
enough - the world never just sex and death,
there is war, too, that great recombinant,
there is sin and there is resurrection.
At night, a voice from the sky, from the mouth
of the archangel, repeats the unknown:
Dress quickly, eat quickly, work quickly, drink
from my cup while the world spins and sleep more.
Unknown to us, Lord, her body amid
brambles and dead branches of bedding, open
till the end like a cat burglar's circle
cut in glass, You answered every prayer,
fulfilled every wish as the world ended.
What I have in mind is a blue lemon
hanging on a fetid, leafless tree. What
I have in mind there is no sense of. Call
the soldiers of heaven to guard the gates,
star, dawn and new moon, though the war has passed.
We adventure now for the miracle,
whose spirit is white water over falls.
At night, the light of the lamp warms the room,
too much or too little, depending on
the season, without possibility,
for admirable days leave little else.
Greek-Canadian poet Evan Jones lives in Manchester. His first collection, Nothing Fell Today But Rain (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2003), was a finalist for the Governor-General's Literary Award for Poetry. He co-edited Modern Canadian Poets (Carcanet, 2010) and his British debut, Paralogues, was published by Carcanet in 2012, followed by Later Emperors in 2020. He is Lecturer in English at The University of Bolton.
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