Sketch of the testing of the cantilever bridge 1883 Courtesy Niagara Falls Public Library
Lo! Cantilever stands the test,
See! see! it bears upon its breast
Fully twenty locomotives’ weight,
Nor bends beneath the heavy freight.
See! twenty engines safely ride
Across Niagara’s seething tide –
Across the mystic iron span –
Last product of the god-like man.
“The Cantilever bridge is strong!”
Exultant shout the wondering throng.
Lo! fifty locomotives screech,
Two nations’ praise blends each with each,
Resounds the East, resounds the West,
The matchless triumph each attest.
The loud applause – the palm each yields
To Cantilever and to Fields.
Gift inscription by Cara Elizabeth Whiton-Stone
What wild convulsion in the ages past
Shook thee to such immeasurable unrest,
Oh, mad Niagara? Did the huge crest
Of some black mountain, splintered by a blast
From Heaven down-bolted, leave these fissures vast
Whence rush thy waters? Or was ocean pressed
From its storm-beaten shores, to dash thy breast
And hurl out rage from thee, while Time shall last?
Rage on, imperial mystery, that thou art;
Chance, in the azoic age, with wonders rife,
At mandate of the gods, from out earth’s heart,
In embryo doomed to everlasting strife,
Thou sprang’st defiant, thundering to thy part,
Magnificent and terrible, as Life.
Rage on, for giant raging thou may’st show,
Through veins that interlace the land, thy power,
And with thy foaming passion, bring to flower
The genius of man; may’st writhing go
Like a colossal serpent, to and fro,
Winding through ribs of steel that massive tower,
And so imprisoned, strike the zenith hour
When science shall supremest secret know:
I liken thee to soul wherein is pent
Divinest madness, that song surging keeps,
Till by unconquerable forces rent,
To mighty music it majestic sweeps.
As the great Odyssey blind Homer sent
Crashing sublimely down eternal steeps.
Source: Myron T. Pritchard, comp. Poetry of Niagara. Boston: Lothrop Publishing Co., 1901.
The book lay closed; each page encased in ice,
till languid eons breathed candescent mist,
releasing knowledge, drip by ponderous drip…
* * *
Twelve thousand years ago, Niagara shaped
its first intent; a trickled thoroughfare
along a chasm scarcely there. It swelled,
became a torrent — nudging, pushing, filled
with rampant longings, surging onward, thrust
of power building, frothing thunder leaping!
The source has birthed a sorcerer who hurls
ebullient roars of ecstasy, wears robes
of lucent majesty. The crowds are hushed,
bewitched by spells of wonderment and awe.
* * *
The book was opened; secrets poured from cores
of weighted centuries and wisdom flowed –
in fluid script that no one understood.
I think of the Niagara
and if I say
“the river it seems remembers nothing”
and you might say
“What?” you might say “are you crazy?”
and if I say
“well, the War of 1812 was fought here
from mouth to source
and it was
the worst conflict, the most violent
ever fought by Europeans
right here on Canadian soil…
not as ‘remember the Alamo’
but as ‘remember Lundy’s Lane'”
the heat of battle
to the death–the worst in North America
until the Civil War
yet if you travel now
to the sight
it’s like hardening of the arteries
of history
it’s carnival traffic, tarmac
and the roar of a frothy falls
full of whisky barrel values
like empty thread spools
dangling from a mad tailor
and all you see
is Blondin on his tight rope
over the rapids
not the red wind
of a single crimson night
how many summers ago
and gone
and if I say
“go to the heights above Burlington Bay
and listen for those headless ghosts
of eight men hanged
go to Queenston
and watch the far banks
for the bad boats
go to Newark/Niagara
and look for the conflagration
listen for the hiss of torches
and the crash of blackened rafters
go to little St. David’s
ride there on a dead horse
trample the vineyards
watch for the wine stain
in the blight of fire and ink
and if by
the echo of a wet rock
if by the strangled cry
of some turning eddy
foaming round in eternal rubble
wearing the shape of the flow
perilous enough
to the jarred heel
to spin a man’s craft
and crack his memory loose
as quick as a war club will
and if I look
to this land
and see
how a man is missed
as if he were never there
how his shape might drop away
like a walker in the fog
some phantom colour fading in the mist
with a ragged twin
of someone watching from the other way
what of this
this earth that holds us
this deeper gravity
this float of stones
these stories
dead tongues tell?
