A Whorl of Poetry

Index of Authors

I've Tasted My Blood

By Milton Acorn (1987).

If this brain's over-tempered
consider that the fire was want
and the hammers were fists.
I've tasted my blood too much
to love what I was born to.

But my mother's look
was a field of brown oats, soft-bearded;
her voice rain and air rich with lilacs:
and I loved her too much to like
how she dragged her days like a sled over gravel.

Playmates? I remember where their skulls roll!
One died hungry, gnawing grey porch-planks;
one fell, and landed so hard he splashed;
and many and many
came up atom by atom
in the worm-casts of Europe.

My deep prayer a curse.
My deep prayer the promise that this won't be.
My deep prayer my cunning,
my love, my anger,
and often even my forgiveness
that this won't be and be.
I've tasted my blood too much
to abide what I was born to.

-- From "I've Tasted My Blood" I've Tasted My Blood (1978), p. 48.

Links:

  • "Proposal for a Realistic Existentialism" is online here.
  • Six poems of Acorn's are online at his U of T page, along with a bio & other goodies.
  • Milton Acorn: The People's Poet, an Industry Canada site, has 6 more poems (incl "I've Tasted My Blood") and tonnes of great photos and propaganda.

Other Milton Acorn, from More Poems For The People:

It's the last stormtime, when summer seems a fantasy,
Something to dream of, a visit to another planet.
Gawd I feel I was an oversize dumptruck
Loaded with everything that fell this year;
All the snow, all the soot and debris in it.

Somewhere else, in space both and time,
The snow's cleaner, but no less fierce.

Milton Acorn has written at least the following books: