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Excerpt of The Journals of Susanna Moodie by Margaret Atwood

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Disembarking at Quebec

Is it my clothes, my way of walking,
the things I carry in my hand
- a book, a bag with knitting -
the incongruous pink of my shawl

this space cannot hear

or is it my own lack
of conviction which makes
these vistas of desolation,
long hills, the swamps, the barren sand, the glare
of sun on the bone-white
driftlogs, omens of winter,
the moon alien in day-
time a thin refusal

The others leap, shout

     Freedom!

The moving water will not show me my reflection.

The rocks ignore.

I am a word
in a foreign language.

Excerpted from The Journals of Susanna Moodie by Margaret Atwood. Copyright © 1970 by Margaret Atwood. Excerpted by permission of Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.