Poems from Tom Thomson in Purgatory, by Troy Jollimore

Below you will find a selected group of poems from the NBCC award winning poetry collection, Tom Thomson in Purgatory, by Troy Jollimore. Do not reprint without permission of the author.

Tom Thomson in His Library

Bookplates, he useth not. Nor needs he to.
Reason the First: all his books share his scent,
a musk of salt-sea air, pine redolent,
and hint of freshly doused campfire (suggest-
ing liberty to some, but to the rest
the reek of disappointment.) Crack the spine
and sniff: you'll know if from his cache it came.
Reason the Next: he has not loaned a book
to anyone for ten plus years. For no
one reads no more, and fewer people still
read what he reads, or feel the slightest pull
to transact business -- giftings, borrowings --
with this musty old man whose books all smell
of salt, of lonesome woods, of drenched dead flames.

Tom Thomson in Limbo

Each thing done is a thousand things not done:
to read Frost is to not-read Henry James
or Keats and/or Rimbaud or Heisenberg ...
(Calculus floors him. Physics spins his mind
beyond all equilibrium.) But worse,
to read anyone else's books is to
not-write his own. But why, when others' songs
fill all the airwaves full, should lack of song
on his own part make him feel shameful so?
If every ear already is stuffed dumb,
why want a voice? (He knows what she'd suggest:
pure egotism.) "In silence can man best
preserve his own integrity," fortune
from fortune cookie say. "And he say " ."

Tom Thomson in Transit

"That train's not run here for a thousand years."
(He means a hundred, maybe?) "They still sell
the tickets at the station, though, if any-
one would like a useless souvenir ... "

And Tom is tempted: he do love useless things.
Remind him, they, of someone he knows well.
His wallet's stuffed with currency from all
manner of countries not in business now;

his camera aches for discontinued film.
(Ditto his typewriter & its odd ribbon.)
And all his maps are maps of continents
that sank without a trace some time ago,

flora and fauna gone extinct, extinct
as Tom himself feel he must surely go.