Susan Spier
traduction du poème de Patrice Desbiens.)

I remember a station wagon cutting through the night
opening the nocturnal darkness like a hunting knife
slits its prey
We are all here
my mother my sister her husband and kids all
in this car with
Johnny B. Good Leblanc at the wheel his face
dimly lit by the light of the dash
I the lone passenger not asleep as
we sail on through a sea of battered green
on either side
My sister sleeps on front seat
the darkness rising and falling with each open breath
The night is long and unfolding
The night is long and unfolding
The night is long and unfolding
The night is long and un- Suddenly
something rips the fabric something moves
there and
the windshield becomes a cinemascope screen the beams
spots by Twentieth Century Fox and Gulf Western lighting up
the beast the moose beast smack in centre highway
frozen
and staring his destiny in the face at 60 miles an hour
His eyes his eyes his eyes o god his gaze until
the last instant and the deaf-mute clash of steel on
flesh
And my sister shrieks awake with an earsplitting yell
raving and
final as though the moose's very soul had pierced
her when
dying and then
silence
the silence of our silence in
the silence between
Timmins and Toronto.

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