Children of Abel

Sharon Goodier was a poet in Toronto.

Mayne’s thirteenth book is a collection of reflections on and observations of incidents, people and experiences. When he looks at nature, his poems pulsate with vivid images. Stone, silence and darkness occur most often. References to death, grief and hate help articulate the poet’s vision.

Abel’s sacrifice was acceptable to God but Mayne asks, “The children of Abel/where are they?” It seems that Cain’s children are running the world in which “... fine’s sword/waits ...to devour a world.” Yet he eschews the idealism of peace in the face of real enemies: “You are … ruder ... than the bomb.” The dove launched from prayer meets “the biting bullet of hate.”

Mayne is painfully conscious of the roots of Jewish suffering in hatred, greed and jealousy. He describes “the unchangeable Jew/carrying the burden of his life/in one bundle of poems.” The most pervasive enemy is the persecutor of Jews. The “dismembering hate” of persecutors is perpetuated in “Hans” a Dutch descendent of a Nazi who represents the ever-present persecutor of Jews.

Many of the poems in this volume are abstruse or vague or depend on language that doesn’t work. “Applause” and “The Pit” fail to enlighten or inform. Often, too, the poems fall short of their potential for prophetic rage. Mayne writes: “Stones roll out the corners of my eyes/I should be crying/not building cairns of grief with this rubble of words.” He is too hard on himself.