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George J. Dance

The February Featured Poet is George J. Dance

Please feel free to email George at: georgedance04@yahoo.com

George J Dance

A SCROLL

By the river I saw geese fly
Like black angels, far and high.
Trees like cracks in a scarlet sky,
A smell of smoke, a dolorous cry:

“Fallen is Babylon the Great,”
Cries the wild goose to his mate.
“All for fire to consume.
Ashes, ashes for their doom.”

“Still we learned to love their land,”
Softer now she answers, “and
Safely in the south land, we
Will miss their insecurity.”

On the bank red sumac lay,
Fires banked at close of day.
Will I watch those fires burn?
Will I see the geese return?

DEMIURGES

But demiurges are around,
Angels, demons too they say,
Jinns and trolls and dwarves and fay
(Though no one ever hears a sound
And not one footprint has been found)
These things are all surrounding me,
Commanding me, controlling me
And this is not mere fantasy,
Insanity, or LSD
But virtual reality.

THRENODY

When the clots of smoke that covered our earth like a cerement
On the day we died, have thinned in the wind and drifted
And the geese return across an azure sky,
Then somewhere below and beyond the broken horizon
From some yet unconquered green and golden island,
Resilient man will emerge; grow wise, and again read
What we have written in guilt, with an innocent eye.

Then, if the final song we shrieked like storm-cocks
At the first flash, outlives the ultimate thunder
To be misunderstood by quieter men,
Remember how we who dwelt in deepening shadow
(Dark over woodland, dark above cloud and water)
Looked upon beauty always as for the last time
And came to hate what we never would see again.

Remember how once we crushed the green bud, uncertain
Of seeing the wind scatter red leaves in autumn,
Or broke the blue egg, that would never be born a bird,
Or wondered, even, whether the white wave beating
Silently over the surface of the water
Should gain the distant shore of the sea in safety
Before we burned (our last cries always unheard).

I would speak with a boy as yet unborn, unburied,
Who has no threnody, yet, for the soon departed
In time of last light, awaiting eternal cold
(I know, I know that millions of men before us
Have looked their last on all in the world that was lovely
And perished as we now perish) and I would tell him
“It should have been ours. We leave it to wrought and mold.”

George J. Dance (born Kingston, Ontario, 1953) lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He has been writing poetry since 1971, and posting it to the Internet since 2007. He publishes an online poetry blog, The Penny Blog at and an accompanying poetry wiki, Penny’s Poetry Pages.

He is the author of Looking and Playing in Space, translations of poetry by Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau (2011); Penny, or Penny’s Hat, a long poem (2013); and Doggerel,and other doggerel, a collection of shorter poems (forthcoming in 2015).