Tamara Loring
traduction du poème de Patrice Desbiens.)

I remember the station wagon slicing the night
slicing the northern night like a hunting knife slits
the throat of its prey
We were all there
my mother, my sister, her husband and kids, all
in that car, with
Johnny B. Goode* Leblanc at the wheel, his face dimly
lit by the dashboard
I'm the only passenger awake as
we press on, parting an ocean of bruised green
on either side
My sister, asleep on the front seat
breathes the darkness in and out of her open mouth
The night is long and seamless
The night is long and seamless
The night is long and seamless
The night is long and then a Sudden
something rips the fabric something is moving out
there and
the windshield is widescreen Cinemascope Twentieth
Century Fox - Gulf Western spotlights blazing onto
a beast, a beast, a moose smack in the middle of the road and
frozen there, locked onto
destiny careering toward him at 60 miles an hour
Those eyes, those eyes those eyes Oh God! That look, right up
to the last second and the muffled thunk of steel on
flesh
My sister woke screaming primal sounds, crazy and
final as if the moose on dying had sent its soul into hers
and then at last,
silence…
the silence of our silence, in
the silence between
Timmins and Toronto.


*(“Johnny B. Goode”, as in Chuck Berry's song, as requested by the translator)


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