I bring this forward and publish it each year in recognition of September 30 as national truth and reconciliation day.

This cento, written under my pen name A. Garnett Weiss, uses lines drawn unaltered apart from changes for the sake of punctuation from individual centos in my 2021 collection, Bricolage, A Gathering of Centos, a finalist for the 2022 Fred Kerner Book Award from the Canadian Authors Association.

I did not know what to do

Let us stand here and admit we have no road,

though what we say can cover truth

beneath the bitter ground this year—

the past itself disgraced by the ferocity of the new

edges curling with blasphemy and blame—

oppression which preceded history.

Vigilant in anguish and unattended grief,

my own heart and I catch my breath in pain,

now ululate in deep despair,

in deep apology,

lonely for something, nameless as they had been

like shades of broken stars.

               Cento gloss

                Title: Olena Kalytiak Davis, “On the Certainty of Bryan”

                Line 1: William Empson, “Homage to The British Museum”

                Line 2: Fred Cogswell, “Black and White”

                Line 3: Susan Hahn, “January Ovaries”

                Line 4: Campbell McGrath, “Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool/The Founding of Brasilia (1950)”

                 Line 5: Molly Peacock, “Blasphemy & Blame”

                 Line 6: Richard Greene, “Independence”

                 Line 7: Gloria Burgess, “Blessing the Lepers”

                 Line 8: Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, “The Race”

                 Line 9: John Whitworth, “The Room under the Eaves”

                 Line 10: E. J. Pratt, “Come Away, Death”

                 Line 11: Claudia Emerson, “Cyst”

                 Line 12: Elliot Fried, “Daily I Fall in Love with Waitresses”