Greg Kelm
(*I welcome your comments on my translation! G. Kelm)
traduction du poème de Patrice Desbiens.)

I recall a station wagon cutting through the night
slitting open the Northern night's belly like a hunting knife
gutting its prey
We are all there
my mother my sister her husband and her children all of us
in that car the driver is
Johnny B. Good Leblanc whose face is dimly lit
by the dashboard's feeble glare
I am the only passenger who is not sleeping since
we are travelling through an ocean of faded green that
surrounds us
My sister is asleep in the front seat
darkness flowing into and out of her open mouth
The night is long with gentle weft
The night is long with gentle weft
The night is long with gentle weft
The night is long with gentle Suddenly
something shreds the tapestry something is moving
there and
the windshield becomes a movie screen the spotlights
shining Twentieth Century Fox and Gulf Western
the animal the animal the moose in the middle of the road
freezes and
stares at his fate speeding towards him at 60 miles an hour
His eyes his eyes his eyes oh god the look in his eyes until
the very last minute and the deaf-mute thud of steel hitting
flesh
And my sister wakes up screaming a scream to wake
the dead and
it was like the soul of the moose had passed into
her as
it died and finally
silence
the silence of our silence in
the silence between
Timmins and Toronto.

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