Poetry of and about Niagara Falls & the Niagara River – the waterfalls, the city, the history, the stunters, and everything else Niagara
My apologies to Gwendolyn MacEwen’s family for initially publishing this poem on the Niagara Falls Poetry Project website without waiting for proper copyright permission. It has been removed at the family’s request.
The poem, about daredevil Karel Soucek, was published in Poetry Canada Review, vol. 8, no. 4, 1987
1
I thought there was nothing in the fields of light
that was not there in darkness
After breakfast in a quiet house
surrounded by pastures of new frost
my heart crouches believing
the next sound will be
something it can sing
2
This is my persistent nightmare
I jump into a shallow river
My feet sink in mud
to mid-calf, the top
of my head
just breaks the surface
It’s November:
too soon for ice
to preserve me
At noon I warm my hands at the apples
ripening on a window sill
3
The smell of cold through an open window
On the corner of my desk
is a print of a mother-goddess
in a black plastic frame:
Syria
Third century B.C.
The guide-book defines
Civilization
means living together
Sometimes a glancing blow
is the back of my wife’s hand
slowly down my thigh
4
And so it comes back to this
In Munich 1974
a man in a bar
said a cormorant
dropping from a cliff
is the soul of
whatever flung this
earth on the sea
Midnight on the highway through Perth County
wearing sunglasses against the headlights
I bite through the cold skin of an apple
Source: Waves vol 11, no 2 & 3, Winter 1983
Robert Billings, born in Niagara Falls, Ontario, and raised Fort Erie, became well known in Canadian literary circles as a poet, critic, teacher, and editor of Poetry Canada Review and Poetry Toronto. In 1983 he penned the poem “Epiphanies of the First Cold Day.” Epiphany 2 foreshadowed his eventual fate. In 1986 after his marriage broke down and bouts of depression hit him, he threw himself into the Niagara River. His body was not recovered until six months later.
Fellow poet and editor Herb Barrett paid tribute to Billings in his poem For Robert Billings
Watch the video At the Brink: A Personal Look at Suicides Over Niagara Falls by Michael Clarkson. Clarkson was a long-time friend of Robert Billings, who is one of the people discussed in the video.
FOR ROBERT BILLINGS
whose body was recovered
from the Niagara Gorge
Some things leave us speechless
‡‡‡‡‡fear of the unknown
‡‡‡‡‡confronting death
‡‡‡‡‡falling in & out of love
‡‡‡‡‡trouble so acute
‡‡‡‡‡we feel strapped
‡‡‡‡‡in a strait jacket
‡‡‡‡‡abandoned
‡‡‡‡‡with no road back
‡‡‡‡‡no forward
‡‡‡‡‡mute as a sacrifice
‡‡‡‡‡waiting to be rendered
‡‡‡‡‡here
‡‡‡‡‡was beauty created
‡‡‡‡‡poems spun
‡‡‡‡‡like tapestries
‡‡‡‡‡to enhance
‡‡‡‡‡the bleak corners
‡‡‡‡‡of existence
‡‡‡‡‡underneath
‡‡‡‡‡some dark corrosive
‡‡‡‡‡ate at the spirit
‡‡‡‡‡the eclectic rocket
‡‡‡‡‡somewhere misfired
‡‡‡‡‡who can judge
‡‡‡‡‡the why
‡‡‡‡‡the day
‡‡‡‡‡desolate as famine
‡‡‡‡‡that drove you
‡‡‡‡‡to the brink
‡‡‡‡‡lonely as a last moment
‡‡‡‡‡your body engulfed
‡‡‡‡‡by roaring mist…
‡‡‡‡‡the cruel rocks
‡‡‡‡‡keep their secret
‡‡‡‡‡where a cry ends
‡‡‡‡‡and silence begins
Source: Canadian Author & Bookman, Vol. 63, no.3, Spring 1988
Robert Billings, a Niagara Falls, Ontario, native, became well known in Canadian literary circles as a poet, critic, teacher, and editor of Poetry Canada Review and Poetry Toronto. In 1983 he penned the poem “Epiphanies of the First Cold Day.” Epiphany 2 reads in part:
This is my persistent nightmare:
I jump into a shallow river
My feet sink in mud to mid-calf, the top of my head just breaks the surface
It’s November
Too soon for the ice to preserve me.
In Waves, vol. 11, issue 2/3, winter 1983
In 1986 after his marriage broke down and bouts of depression hit him, he threw himself into the Niagara River. His body was not recovered until six months later.
Read “Epiphanies of the First Cold Day” here
Herb Barrett (c1912-1995) was a poet who first published in the Hamilton Spectator in the 1930s, helped found the Canadian Poetry Association, and was a long-time poetry magazine editor. The Haiku Foundation named The Herb Barrett Award after him.
A typical studio portrait using a backdrop of a view of Niagara Falls.
Image Courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library
My great-grandparents are both twenty-one.
This is their honeymoon. They sit in front
of a pasteboard screen of Niagara Falls
painted in aniline blues and greens.
Unnecessary props—plaster columns, draperies
and wax flowers—have been pushed aside.
He leans his elbow on the false balustrade,
restless in his dark suit, one leg extended,
One hand hidden behind her back.
Both of them frown at the camera.
He has not even taken off his hat
to balance it on his knee. Perhaps
he is already thinking of leaving.
Inverted in the viewing glass her white dress
wavers in and out of focus. The photographer
bends above his box and pleated bellows,
a black cloth over his head.
He tends the image carefully, as if
it is a lantern he is trying to keep
alight. This far north the sun sets early.
Beyond the glass wall of the studio
it is already night. The photographer lifts
his hand to bid them to be still. He lights
the touch paper. The shutter clicks.
Magnesium flashes with the power of
twelve hundred candles. As the column
of white smoke settles, the room fills
with a fine metallic powder. Their faces are
both silvered over. This is the only photograph
of them together. They do not move or speak.
Outside each second nine thousand tons of water
fall through the full dark of the last century.
Source: The New Republic, vol 218, issue 13, March 30, 1998
During the so-called war of 1812-14 between England and the United States, Laura Secord, the wife of a crippled British veteran, saved the British forces from surprise and possible destruction by the heroic action narrated in the ballad. Her home lay near the celebrated Queenston Heights, a few miles from the Falls of Niagara.
Drummond Hill Cemetery, Niagara Falls.
Image courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library
Softly the spell of moonlight fell
‡‡On the swift river’s flow,
On the gray crags of Queenston Heights,
‡‡And the green waves below.
Alone the whip-poor-will’s sad cry
‡‡Blent with the murmuring pines,
Save where the sentry paced his rounds
‡‡Along th’ invading lines.
But in one lowly cottage home
‡‡Were trouble and dismay ;
Two anxious watchers could not sleep
‡‡For tidings heard that day ;
Brave James Secord, with troubled heart,
‡‡And weary crippled frame,
That bore the scars of Queenston Heights,
‡‡Back to his cottage came ;
For he had learned a dark design
‡‡Fitzgibbon to surprise,
As with a handful of brave men
‡‡At Beaver Dam he lies.
‘And Boerstler, with eight hundred men,
‡‡Is moving from the shore
To steal upon our outpost there,
‡‡Guarded by scarce two score !
‘Then, wiping out, as well he may,
‡‡That gallant little band,
The foe will sweep his onward way
‡‡O’er the defenceless land.
‘Then noble Brock had died in vain—
‡‡If but Fitzgibbon knew !’—
And the poor cripple’s heart is fain
‡‡To press the journey through.
But Laura, bending o’er her babes,
‡‡Said, smiling through her tears :
‘These are not times for brave men’s wives
‡‡To yield to craven fears.
‘You cannot go to warn our men,
‡‡Or slip the outposts through ;
But if perchance they let me pass,
‡‡This errand I will do.’
She soothed his anxious doubts and fears :
‡‡She knew the forest way ;
She put her trust in Him who hears
‡‡His children when they pray !
Soon as the rosy flush of dawn
‡‡Glowed through the purple air,
She rose to household tasks—and kissed
‡‡Her babes with whispered prayer.
To milk her grazing cow she went ;
‡‡The sentry at the lines
Forgot to watch, as both were lost
‡‡Amid the sheltering pines.
The rising sun’s first golden rays
‡‡Gleamed through the forest dim,
And through its leafy arches rang
‡‡The birds’ sweet morning hymn.
The fragrant odour of the pines,
‡‡The carols gay and sweet,
Gave courage to the fluttering heart,
‡‡And strength to faltering feet.
And on she pressed, with steadfast tread,
‡‡Her solitary way,
O’er tangled brake and sodden swamp
‡‡Through all the sultry day.
Though, for the morning songs of birds
‡‡She heard the wolf’s hoarse cry,
And saw the rattlesnake glide forth,
‡‡As swift she hurried by.
Nor dark morass nor rushing stream
‡‡Could balk the steadfast will,
Nor pleading voice of anxious friends
‡‡Where stood St. David’s Mill.
The British sentry heard her tale,
‡‡And cheered her on her way ;
But bade her ‘ware the Indian scouts
‡‡Who in the covert lay.
Anon, as cracked a rotten bough
‡‡Beneath her wary feet,
She heard their war-whoop through the gloom,
‡‡Their steps advancing fleet ;
But quickly to the questioning chief
‡‡She told her errand grave
How she had walked the livelong day
‡‡Fitzgibbon’s men to save !
The redskin heard, and kindly gazed
‡‡Upon the pale-faced squaw ;
Her faithful courage touched his heart,
‡‡Her weary look he saw.
‘Me go with you’ was all he said,
‡‡And through the forest gray
He led her safe to Beaver Dam,
‡‡Where brave Fitzgibbon lay.
With throbbing heart she told her tale ;
‡‡They heard with anxious heed,
Who knew how grave the crisis was.
‡‡How urgent was the need !
Then there was riding far and near,
‡‡And mustering to and fro
Of troops and Indians from the rear
‡‡To meet the coming foe ;
And such the bold, determined stand
‡‡Those few brave soldiers made—
So fiercely fought the Indian band
‡‡From forest ambuscade,—
That Boerstler in the first surprise
‡‡Surrendered in despair,
To force so small it scarce could serve
‡‡To keep the prisoners there !
While the brave weary messenger
‡‡In dreamless slumber lay,
And woke to find her gallant friends
‡‡Were masters of the fray.
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗
If e’er Canadian courage fail,
‡‡Or loyalty grow cold,
Or nerveless grow Canadian hearts,
‡‡Then be the story told—
How British gallantry and skill
‡‡There played their noblest part,
Yet scarce had won if there had failed
‡‡One woman’s dauntless heart !
Source: Agnes Maule Machar. Lays of the ‘True North’ and Other Canadian Poems. 2nd enlarged ed. London: E. Stock, 1902
Click here to see an earlier version of this poem, published in 1880, under the title Mary Secord and using Machar’s pen name ‘Fidelis’
Read about the Battle of Beaverdams
Read more poems about the War of 1812