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The Gates of Hell

For Cerberus (1952) by Raymond Souster,
Irving Layton, Louis Dudek

With squeals (falsetto)
in a blameless poetry's
dead lingo:
"BEWARE OF DAAHG!!"
the local Boatman
warns off

that three-tongued tearaway
scampering past Toronto's
Depression buildings,
on a grey
pre-Canada Council
day.

More screams, getting louder
as he trots between
Customs and Dominion Sugar,
then emerges from the Underpass,
to hoots
from the line-up

for the Downtowner's
"Invasion of the Body Snatchers."
— But a yawn's the response
all the way up University
— past Canada Trust,
Imperial Life —

and, most positively, throat-clearings
from a certain miffed Victoria
College underwriter.
— And all before he'd
even raised
a leg!

Of course, it was what he said
— as one and all
his upraised heads
cut loose with barking
fit to wake
the living dead.

A million screen-doors
squealed shut
in the little frame-houses
— where the gates of hell
stood open between
Toronto and Montreal.

A dog answering
to that name
— the better read
wrote (and said) —
should be guard to none
but the deathless dead.

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