Variations on Herb

By John B. Lee

Winner of the 1995 Milton Acorn Memorial People’s Poetry Prize

Variations on Herb is the latest in a lengthening series of books that emanate from the south-western Ontario farm of John B. Lee's childhood. The focus of Variations is Herb Lee, John B's grandfather (and an absolutely unforgettable curmudgeon) but the background of rural Ontario is also made palpable entirely without indulgent explanation. This grain, this rich vein that appears in book after book, may well be inexhaustible; the cumulative effect certainly has few parallels in Canadian writing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brick Books
• Release date: May 15, 1993
• ISBN: 9781771312707

Book preview

Variations on Herb

Variations on Herb

John B. Lee

Brick Books

CANADIAN CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Lee, John B., 1951-

   Variations on Herb

Poems.

ISBN 978-1-771312-70-7

1. Title.

PS8573.E3V37 1993     c8n′.54    C93-094261-2

PR9199.3.L33V37 1993

Copyright © John B. Lee, 1993.

The support of the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council is gratefully acknowledged. The support of the Government of Ontario through the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Recreation is also gratefully acknowledged.

This work was completed with the aid of a Works in Progress grant from the Ontario Arts Council.

Frontispiece illustration by Frank Woodcock; author photo by Brian Thompson.

Brick Books

Box 20081

431 Boler Road

London, Ontario

N6K 4G6

Canada

www.brickbooks.ca

for my grandmother Stella Emerick Lee, nee Crosby

for my mother Lillian Irene Lee, nee Busteed

the women were strongest who stayed

At times I hated my grandfather, Herb Lee, and could hardly wait for him to die. I am not proud of this. I was perplexed when others called him ‘great.’ At his funeral when someone said, ‘It must be very hard to lose him. You must be very sad,’ I might have replied, ‘No, not hard, not sad, but strange.’ I had thought he was immortal.

In the photograph

I am four years old

staring through snow fence slats

towards my grandfather's house.

I am reaching

through the red ribs of the fence.

Perhaps I am reaching out to him.

I

Here are the bare facts of morning:

this blue, this yellow, this white,

this motley intervention of builded colours

squatting in the foreground

as if to sniff the path of vision

from the minded world.

Far from the garden

we are born,

but the smell of earth

might stiffen our resolve

to live within the flesh awhile.

Accept the heart's unweeded stone

       dance within its shadows

like a flame.

Accept the mind is such a muscle

       to go flexing in the dark

like wingless beetles in a high dish.

Accept this egginess of light

      that sticks to the world

      and makes its shapes involve us

like breath across an open wound.

So, ‘What's in a name?’

The old farm letterhead reads

H.M. Lee

H. as in Herbert

‘brilliant, glorious warrior’

son of John and Rebecca

grandson of John and Sarah

born in the village of Highgate, Ontario

I thank you for remembering my birthday. As you know, I came into this world on the 27th of February, 1877, and if my math is correct, that will make me, as of this writing, 84 years old tomorrow. So, you can figure that I am due any time for the worms, but I do not feel like dying.

Feb. 26th, 1961

M. as in Mercer

‘merchant, or storekeeper’

married Stella Emerick Crosby                  ‘Is she gone then?’

June 10, 1910

Church of Redeemer

fathered seven children

with Irish surname Lee:

(Gaelic) ‘a sweet green meadow where poets come to dream’

H. M. Lee died March n, 1966

buried, Gosnell Cemetery

occupation, farmer …

‘a farmer should leave the land

in better condition

when he is done with it

than it was in

when he began working it

for the land is more

than the grave of the father

it is also the soil

of the son.’

in my sleep I see him

dreaming water with his hands

making the little journey

to his mouth

with pools of light

This was the land:

clergy reserve settled in 1841

by Irish John

who begat Big John

who begat Herb

who begat bachelor Red-Hocks John and brother George

who begat John B., who left

These are the fields:

the east muck, the west muck

the sheep meadow, east and west

the bull-pen pasture

the corn-crib pasture

the railway fields

the gravel-pit field

and the other place–the McCaskill field

the slaughterhouse field, the little field

These are the buildings of the farm on the crest of the hill:

the clinker built house

the brick house

the pump house

the scalding shed, the implement shed

the hen house

the horse barn, the brick barn, the big barn

the old barn, the new barn

the sheep pen, the bull pen, the ram's pen

the silo

This is what's needed:

new hands to take up the plough,

                     finish the story

The first John Lee that come to this country, my father's father, was a good man. A story they used to tell about him went this way: A woman arrived in Highgate from Ireland. She come to take up her reserve land. Her husband had died upon disembarking, so it was just her and the kids. Now, they didn't want to give the land to her, cause it was in her husband's name and they didn't much like the idea of giving the land to women neither. So she walked the Indian Trail, what's now 401, to Toronto. It's about a hundred miles. When she got there the land office was closed. It happens that there was already a fellow there with an appointment to apply for her grant. I'm not too sure of the details, but as he was first in line, and a man to boot, it was almost certain he'd be given the