r Justice;
good mercy disguised
brother Lenin
as a simple dock worker,
the plague-bacillus quickens.

20
Orange filaments of smoke
are better than the factory whistle,
a good arsonist recruits
his own flames,
fans his own fire.
The crackle of desire
over hearth stones
is reward enough in itself.

THE GARDEN

And like a cobbler at a bench
I return to my musings
why Kensington Gardens
with its grand, theatrical entrance
is gateway to London's poor
--why the stiff Victoria and Albert
monument or grand canopy
to the Hemispheres
has a bison for the Americas
or sultry elephant of
Asia fame
(India being the brightest
jewel in the Empress' crown);
why other archetypal animals at their pleasure
are carved in gleaming milk white
when the rich at their
leisure, to and fro,
dine elegantly as tight
buds arranged on a stem.

2
I've not mentioned the poor
come to the Serpentine
a little ways up in Hyde Park
only to be chased out
of Kensington at closing--
the cobbler at his bench,
croupier at Whites,
the elephant as a hatchet beast
run amuck
in the stellar pool
of the eye's fixed poor.

CANVASSING

And I thought of things,
things that come in small clutches,
tiny memories,
thoughts evoking the
approach of time or
footsteps about to open graves.
More things than the troubled
single entities we attach to them;
things marbled with the elasticity of rain,
rumours of war, pitch black leaves in the
bottom of a pond where the whelp of a dog
tries to outrun night.

COMMENTS

...Unrestrained, imaginative writing.
Brown's magic is the vibrating universe,
his sympathy is his ability to receive these vibrations.
Sympathetic Magic captures the movement of life in its intervals--
his poems resemble stopped action
photographs from a film.

THE TORONTO STAR

...The poetry is fine... rewarding reading...
Almost every poem in Sympathetic Magic
boasts an admirable image or two.
Brown can write, without a doubt.

POETRY CANADA POESIE

...wry humour.
The poet revels in image and can use it well.
Paul Cameron Brown is capable of interesting,
even arresting work.

CANADIAN BOOK REVIEW ANNUAL 1985

Le voyage exotique devient parfois fantistique...
Se plonger dans les pages de "Sympathetic Magic", c' est
partir pour un autre monde oil Paul Cameron Brown
envoute par les