Lucie Ranger
traduction du poème de Patrice Desbiens.)

I remember a station wagon slicing through the night
Slitting the northern night like a hunting knife
slits its prey
We're all there
My mother, my sister, her husband and kids
in that car
Johnny B Good Leblanc at the wheel, his face dimly lit
by dashboard glow
I'm the only passenger who isn't sleeping
as we drive on, bruised green-black sea
on either side
My sister asleep in the front seat
Darkness sliding in and out of open mouth
The night is long and still
The night is long and still
The night is long and still
The night is long and Suddenly
something gashes the stillness something moves
there and
the windshield becomes a Cinemascope screen
Twentieth Century Fox headlights and Gulf Western illuminating
the animal the animal the moose in the middle of the road
Frozen
Mesmerized by fate rushing at it 60 miles an hour
Its eyes, its eyes, oh God, its gaze fixed
'til the last second and the deaf-mute shock as steel
strikes flesh
My sister awake cries out
a final piercing scream
as though penetrated
by the dying animal's soul
And then
Silence
The silence of our silence in
the silence between
Timmins and Toronto

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