Rose Després
traduction du poème de Patrice Desbiens.)

I remember a station wagon that cuts the night
that opens the northern night like a hunting knife
opens its prey
We're all there
my mother my sister her husband and her children all
in this car it's
Johnny B. Good Leblanc driving his face vaguely
lit up by the glow of the dashboard
I'm the only passenger who doesn't sleep while
we continue with a green tainted ocean on
both sides
My sister sleeps on the front seat
the darkness going in and out of her open mouth
The night is long and without creases
The night is long and without creases
The night is long and without creases
The night is long and Suddenly
something tears the fabric something moves
there and
the windshield becomes a cinemascope screen the spotlights
of Twentieth Century Fox and Gulf Western illuminating
the animal the animal the moose right in the middle of the road
that freezes and frames its destiny rolling at it at 60 miles an hour
Its eyes its eyes its eyes o god its gaze right up to
the last minute and the deaf mute thud of iron against
flesh
And my sister who wakes up screaming a long crazy and final
scream
as if the soul of the moose had passed
to her in
dying and finally
the silence
the silence of our silence in
the silence between
Timmins and Toronto.

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