"At first he was out with the dawn
whether it yellowed bright as wood-columbine
or was only a fuzzed moth in a flannel of storm
But he found the mountain was clearly alive"
The protagonist of this poem is a man who's been in the wilderness for long enough that people think he's going crazy. The man begins his isolation with a willing readiness to work, to conquer, and to achieve. Eventually, however, he learns that nature will respond. The forces on the mountain start to erode his work, until he's forced to re-strategize something more harmonious with the life already present on the mountain.
"It is not easy to free
myth from reality
or rear this fellow up
to lurch lurch with them
in the tranced dancing of men"
This poem concludes with a picture of two men leading a chained bear down a mountain, simultaneously trying to train it to dance and trying to keep out of its reach. They're hoping to make money off a dancing bear. They want to portray this bear as "trained," a performer, but they're really showing a wild bear. As the conclusion of the poem implies here, myth -- in this case the ideal image of a performing bear -- is a human construction, a manipulation of reality -- or the natural order.
"we French, we English, never lost our civil war,
endure it still, a bloodless civil bore;"
Here, the poet makes a reference to Canadian culture and to the national struggle between cultures - French and English. This excerpt challenges national unity.
"no wounded lying about, no Whitman wanted.
It's only by our lack of ghosts we're haunted."
This excerpt refers to Canada's short past and to the absence of writers in Canada. There is not too much to be remembered for, unlike in America, by this time. Writers even wandered off, and sometimes flew out of Canada.
