Kathleen Allan introduces Primary Colours

Primary Colours, composed by Kathleen Allan, poems (1981) by Miriam Waddington (1917-2004). Text used with permission of Jonathan and Marcus Waddington. Performed by Elektra Women's Choir, Artistic Director Morna Edmundson, pianist Stephen Smith, and soloist Caitlin Robinson.

1 . Being Born

Be red,
a red of space
and stretch,
a flow,
a burst of
burn.

And now
reverse, contract,
enclose
to interpoint:
shift darkness
into out or in
until you have
a hearse,
a box, a cage,
with nets and loops
of leaves, with pods
of seeds.

Then move
in protoplasmic
dance
through streaming
mysteries
of cell and cellicle;
flow
through careful
barriers of bone
and storms
of blood,
past cartilage
and hinge,
past loose vestigial
wings and
dangle from torn
ligaments and broken
muscle strings.

Whatever
you are or ever
were or who,
made old or
born new,
embellish,
polish space;
rake up the
summer, loosen
winds,
Plant seeds until
glorious at last
you hang
upside down from
sky’s umbilicals.

2. Living

Be blue,
a blue of fathomless,
a spray of far,
a gleam of
absent sunlit
highs and
glittering echoings,
grab the empty
edge of skies,
swing wide,
and plunge
to blanching
presences.

Now write
your hieroglyphs
on snowman’s
letterhead,
dictate
your glaciers to
sleeping space,
compose
an orange song
and circle it
with canticles
of blue;
pack up the forest
and consign
its hundred owlish
eyes to earth
in nailed crates
of night.

Or slide
some measured
two-by-fours
through open window frames;
then wake the
dreaming dead
and touch
their breath
with stars.

Before you leave,
sweep the blue
sawdust up
into a heap,
and with clean
brushes scatter it—
through a thousand
radiant doors.

3. Dying

Yellow,
who are you
yellow?
Tuwhit tuwhoo
I am I,
yellow and
you are you.

Yellow
you are the
sound’s horizons,
its early
orisons unpacked
from vats
of dew.

And yellow,
you are the
golden bar
across
the topmost
star.

You are also
the fertile toad
of the yellow
swollen day,
you are yellow;
the shrunken
pearl of the
loudly yellow
night.

[leonareimer]

Hi Kathleen,
I am creating a biography on Miriam Wadding for my English Class at the University of Winnipeg. I would possibly like to show video this during my presentation in class and I was hoping I could contact you privately, as I would love to hear more about your experience working with her creative pieces. Thanks Leona.