For As Far as the Eye Can See (9 page)

subtle joy sown by the shimmering brightness.

The houses leaning up against each other

offer a connected frontage of window rhythms

in the brick surfaces softened by the fog.

Sparrows clinging in the leafless trees

are fruit that no hand will gather; they

fly up and scatter as the stroller passes.

All he wants is to saunter down the slope of time,

spending at his leisure this afternoon of

a December so mild that everyone's amazed,

but as soon as he reaches the avenue, he'll act like

the rest, goaded by work and rushing from one line

to the next in the squares of their day planners.

“I realize I've got nothing to complain about … ”

she says to the friend beside her

as we pass them on the sidewalk.

She's a woman in the street, plumpish, ordinary

no doubt, although we had only a glimpse of her

and will never know or want to know more.

It's enough to stroll in the light, in the midst

of all that it enfolds in its softness,

it's enough to be oneself a single note

and nothing more, in the concert created

by all these things, in this street, at this hour,

to have nothing really to complain about.

He walks slowly, limping, because his boots are

too big and blister his heels, and because he's tramped

for so long in the street like this, not knowing where.

He sees people stepping aside to avoid him, he guesses

they're turning to look as he passes, exclaiming at

the wake of stink that he himself no longer smells.

In both hands he's toting torn plastic bags that he'll

have to replace tomorrow if the trash can he's planning

to rummage in provides no others. He no longer remembers

not having plodded, lugging these worthless things,

through streets become one endless street, in the din,

the throng, the cold, the sun, the wind and the traffic.

The crow swoops and dips, wings outspread

under the misty sky. There have to be clouds,

between two seasons, before he'll appear.

He hangs in the air, seems to fall back,

catches himself and alights at the top of a maple,

where he sways, slowly and majestically.

The world around is made all of wind and cold,

out of the immense conch shell of space, the whole

laid out below, where he deigns to look down.

He inspects the horizon, of which he takes

possession with loud caws, then flies off

into the thickening mist, and is gone.

As soon as we step out, the cold stings.

The street seems hardened or tightened.

Space recedes in shrunken perspectives.

Instinct impels us, or habit, to pull in our heads,

and hunch our shoulders, to gather ourselves

together and offer less hold to the glacial air.

We hear nothing but the crunch of our footsteps.

An occasional car passes, underscoring

the perfect silence we're listening to.

Hard to explain what we're doing outdoors

in this weather, at this hour, absolutely outdoors,

and there's no one to ask the question.

In the vastness of a hospital parking lot (this is indeed what

the moon would be like, were we on it, quintessential suburb,

suburb of the earth), a crow alights on a lamppost

and loudly salutes the ten-thirty sunlight in its multiple

reflections on the hoods, the bumpers and the chrome.

Near the emergency entrance, ambulance attendants

smoke and gossip in the chilly air. They survey

the steppe of cars that they've seen so often.

A few patients shepherded by family, old people

or walking like old people, shuffle very slowly away

under the monumental sky. An ambulance wheels in,

lights whirling and flashing. The crow flies off.

You've got to tear up these drafts you've copied,

which are nothing now but the sum of the errors

and approximations that you've tried to correct,

although it's not without pleasure that you view the design

of crossings out, arrows, circlings, additions, scrawls

of blue or red or black ink, plus some underlinings

you don't remember making. For what purpose

do you study your mind's mess here, the random

chance that you tried to win—in vain, don't you see?

You were hoping for one true word that's neither here,

nor in those clean copies you slide into a folder and—

in their place—the just-about of your abilities.

I have built up a monument as fragile as the grass,

as unstable as the daylight, as fleeting as the air, and

as fluid as the rain we see running in the streets.

I've consigned it to paper that will dry, and

which may burn, or be splotched by the damp

with a bloom of pink, or green, or grey mildew,

and give off a pungent earthy odour. I've worked

in the transient substance of a tongue that will

cease to be spoken, sooner or later, or be pronounced

some other way, forming other words to convey

other thoughts. I've pledged it to the oblivion certain

to enfold all that this day bathes in its sweetness.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert Melançon is one of Quebec's most original poets. He won the Governor General's Award for Poetry for his collection
Blind Painting
and shared the Governor General's Award for Translation with Charlotte Melançon for their French version of A.M. Klein's
The Second Scroll
. A long-time translator of Canadian poet Earle Birney, Melançon has been the poetry columnist for the Montreal newspaper
Le Devoir
and the Radio-Canada program
En Toutes Lettres
. He lives in North Hatley, in Quebec's Eastern Townships.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Judith Cowan has translated the works of a wide range of Québecois poets, including books by Gérald Godin and Yves Préfontaine. She won the Governor General's Award for
Mirabel
, her translation of Pierre Nepveu's
Lignes aériennes
. The author of two collections of short stories,
More Than Life Itself
and
Gambler's Fallacy
, she taught for many years at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, and lives in Trois-Rivières, Quebec.