Viator

By Amélie Frank

Blackwood put that horror of Canada into me,
he wrote how an Indian guide could taste the air
and smell the Algonquin demon lurking there,
a thing so foul it frightened the Ojibwa and the Cree.

Northern solitude and the panic of the wild:
Blackwood put that horror of Canada into me;
he loosed a psychosis nesting in the maple trees
and hungry practices the First Nations reviled.

As he sent a hapless French-Canadian chasseur
on a honeymoon flight “of . . . fiery speed”
Blackwood put that horror of Canada into me,
depravity over matter: what’s evil moves faster!

Ethonographers dub cannibals a Great White Greed
Lesson learned: if I see the Indian sniff, now, I run
Certain things I can’t countenance even under the sun
Blackwood put that horror of Canada into me.