Maureen Ranson
traduction du poème de Patrice Desbiens.)

I remember a station wagon cutting through the night
cutting open the northern night the way a hunting knife
cuts open its prey
We were all there
my mother my sister her husband and her children
all in the car
Johnny B. Good Leblanc was driving
his face dimly lit by the glow of the dashboard lights
I was the only passenger not sleeping
as we kept on cutting through an ocean of green deadened by darkness
on either side
My sister was asleep on the front seat
her mouth open breathing blackness in and out
The night was long and wrinkle-free
The night was long and wrinkle-free
The night was long and wrinkle-free
The night was long and Suddenly
its wrinkle-free fabric was cut open by something something moving
there and
the windshield was a cinemascopic screen
lit up by the beams of Twentieth Century Fox and Gulf Western spotlights
the animal the animal the moose right in the middle of the road
frozen and
staring at his fate speeding toward him at sixty miles an hour
his eyes his eyes his eyes Oh God his eyes kept staring
right up to the last minute to the deafening dumbfounding shock of steel striking
flesh
My sister woke up screaming
a last loud wild scream
as if the soul of the dying moose had penetrated
her
And finally
there was silence
the silence of our silence
in the silence from
Timmins to Toronto.

Home / Page d'accueil