Louisa Blair
traduction du poème de Patrice Desbiens.)

I remember a station wagon cutting through the night
slicing through the northern night as a hunting knife
slices open its prey
We were all there
my mother my sister her husband and children everyone
in the car it was
Johnny B. Good Leblanc driving you could just see his face
by the glow of the dashboard
I was the only passenger not sleeping while we went
on and on and on each side a sea
of bruised green
My sister slept on the front seat
the darkness going in and out of her open mouth
The night is long and nothing changes
The night is long and nothing changes
The night is long and nothing changes
The night is long and nothing Suddenly
something tore through the web something moved
over there and
the windshield became a Cinemascope the headlights
of Twentieth Century Fox and Gulf Western lit up
the animal the animal the moose right in the middle of the road
who froze
and fixed his destiny coming at him at 60 miles an hour
His eyes his eyes his eyes O god that look right
up to the last minute and the deafmute shock of metal on
flesh
And my sister who woke up yelling a great mad
and final yell as if the soul of the moose had gone into
her in
dying and finally
the silence
the silence of our silence in
the silence between
Timmins and Toronto.

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