Into This Dark Earth

Neil Querengesser taught in the Department of English, University of Calgary, Alberta.

The obelisk-like structure from which Unfinished Monument Press takes its name is the focus of the two poems in this chapbook. The poems grew out of a grey, snowy day when Raymond Souster and James Deahl made a pilgrimage to the graves of three men who died in the revolt of the Canadas against Britain in 1837 and who now lie buried in the Toronto Necropolis. Souster and Deahl were continuing the tradition begun by Milton Acorn in 1971, by laying flowers at the graves of Peter Matthews and Samuel Lount beneath the monument erected to their memory in 1893, and also at the grave of William Lyon Mackenzie, at the opposite end of the cemetery. The two poems resulting from this visit reflect the powerful feelings of each poet about the circumstances of the Revolt and about the tragic executions of the Patriots. Souster’s “A Walk to the Graves of Heroes,” a monologue addressed primarily to Deahl, recounts the poets’ journey to the cemetery in long lines of narrative, making some stinging observations about “Our first civil war and our last.” In contrast, Deahl’s poem, “The Unfinished Monument,” is a series of sharply etched imagistic pieces that intermingle his various impressions of their walk to the Necropolis with images of the 1837 Revolt. Into This Dark Earth is a thin book, but it is nevertheless a powerful reminder of a too easily forgotten conflict.