Jean Coulombe
traduction du poème de Patrice Desbiens.)

Things that go still in the night

I remember a station wagon slicing through the night
like a hunting knife cutting up
its prey
All of us there
my mom sister her husband and kids all
fill this car with
Johnny B. Good Leblanc driving lightly his face
reflects the dashboard lights
I'm the only one looking out while we
drive into the broken green ocean on
both sides
My sister sleeps slumped in the front seat
her open mouth breathe the night in and out
The night is long straight flat
The night is long straight flat
The night is long straight flat
The night is long straight But
something suddenly shears the veil it moves
right there
the windshield is a drive-in screen the beams
of Twentieth Century Fox and Gulf Western spotlight
the animal the animal the moose smack on the middle line
his eyes
starring at fate racing at him at sixty miles per hour
his eyes his eyes his eyes oh god his eyes wide open
facing to the last second the steel that plows its
flesh

And my sister wakes up screaming a madding
cry and
final as if the soul of the moose hits
her when
she dies and then
the still
the stillness of our still in
the stillness in between
Timmins and Toronto.

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