Country You Can't Walk In

M.T. Kelly
Illustration by Mary Weymark-Goss

4 X 7 inches, 48 pages
one b&w drawing

THIS REISSUE of M.T. Kelly's 1979 publication spanks a fresh format and seven more poems, still about the north.

'Evokes the ugliness and brutality of man's impact on the North with saw-edged images'

—John Bemrose, Globe and Mail

'The words are sparse and singularly chilling, much like northern landscapes � a fine collection of poetry'
—Waves

'Passionately disturbing'
—Robin Skelton, Quill & Quire


He's very quiet you said, meaning dull,
the man you're going to marry;
and no matter what the shadows promise,
nothing is transformed.
Everyone can claim a kind of innocence.

What matters is that images linger;
one humid night, two women,
a dream that was a prayer:
the boreal forest in winter,
a glade at the edge of the world.

A god inhabits them all,
A god of high spring sky,
Of April and May light:
There's a shimmer
in this haunted wood.

What gleams repeats,
The god will come again.

—After The God

M. T. Kelly

Author