White Piano
Between the verbs quivering and streaming,
White Piano
unfolds its variations like a musical score. With a play of resonance between pronouns and persons, between prose and poetry, and narrating a constellation of questions, this new book of poetry by the internationally renowned Nicole Brossard offers readers a ‘language that cultivates its own craters of fire and savoir-vie.’
first English edition
English translation copyright © Robert Majzels and Erín Moure, 2013
Original French text copyright © Nicole Brossard, 2011
Originally published in 2011 in French as
Piano blanc
by Les Editions L’Hexagone
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada, through the National Translation Program for Book Publishing, for our translation activities. Coach House Books thanks, for their support, the Block Grant Programs of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. We also appreciate the support of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Brossard, Nicole, 1943-
[Piano blanc. English]
White piano / Nicole Brossard ; translated by Robert Majzels and Erin Mouré. — 1st English ed.
Poems.
Translation of: Blanc piano.
ISBN
978-1-77056-345-2
I. Majzels, Robert, 1950- II. Mouré, Erin, 1955- III. Title. IV. Title: Piano blanc. English.
PS8503.R7P51813 2013 C841′.54 C2012-908532-4
This ebook was produced with
http://pressbooks.com
.
This title is available as a print book:
ISBN
978-1-55245-273-8
We have to confront our own variation.
– Michel Serres
1
it’s a quiet Wednesday
no one clamours
light reaches the body
coils round the wrists
darkness held in custody
2
softly we talk
of slipping toward the brink
disfigured
far from humanity
3
in the morning I’ve a number in my feelings
an eye of second person plural
a notion with me fed by emotion
by animal kingdom and by
azul
4
now you watch out for the commas
that erase and raise the night
now when the time comes you caress
a sheet of water and its logic of conflagration
5
I say what they say
about not telling lies
it’s infinitely
risky, and we breathe
6
one hour before summer
night had a body
as in certain phrases
at the edge of the universe
7
language I’ll say yes
from the top of my rib cage
language will you come
out and unearth the salt the certitude
The Use of Tiny Vertigos
whoever still insists on clinging to the real
to stammer in the repertoire
of guns and the serial loops of others
upright our body doesn’t think any less
sea, hunger, the mysterious manoeuvre
of air and its fabulous leaps in the chest
at the speed of shadow
to break free of the self you have to toe the line
between centuries and galaxies celestial hopscotch
our mythology of millennial night
a few names of beasts with hearts ripped out
fruity transparency of our sexes
it all breaks free of the self alive too brief
The Inside of Someone
I say the inside of someone not knowing
out of what muscle bone or ligament
if it’s a line of horizon in the brain
or knots of night in the throat
not knowing if it’s tender
or vast word with a name
The Inside of Someone: version2
first an idea of darkness
then I have hands
a few syllables jettisoned
but rough tide of morning returns
and the inner world is outspread
with shores of organic silence
The Inside of Someone: other version
okay so it’s thick
with images of slow skiffs and cliffs
in the midst of dead languages
okay so too much absolute crashes in the gut
The Inside: version3
even if no one’s there
the essential rolls eager with innards and infancy
draws its own lines of life
anecdotes not quite cannibal
even in the absence of pronouns
the essential absorbs the heat
of the frescoes of frenzy and confession
The Inside
without lux(ury) language strains unbearable
so I move quick
if we slow down if we erase I insist
I’ve just got to juggle
elsewhere slowly soaking softens me
come on narration I await
your indiscreet questions your ideas of
having a blast
it’s so simple, and pain we can recount
to substitute the carnivores
The Inside Reversed
grammar of echo round constellated
of peoples in flight,
city legs knees hurry up cited
then hope of superstition
a comfort of the end of the world
out there a rich foam of intimate life
spelled sky that thunders right up to the pupils
too much love and not enough
afterward we say it’s the North
and we go to bed with a woman
in the silence slow foliage
we sleep right through the night
without punctuation or sepulchre
in the machine to inundate the world
suddenly I’m where the wind begins
I’d like to understand
mammals, the humanity that runs
in the veins
the hand-to-hand combat of grief
the drowned world the images of farewell
how our lips
and the huge side of the sea
other times it’s suspicious I become
a generation a vine
a cascade of shadows and of dialogues
in the lounge white piano
a work in imagination
curled fingers centred over the keyboard
no night can live up to night and its story
Hotel Furama
the dictatorship rose up
all blue, all night
nuggets of interdiction
it would be dark
in a mirror at night it would be impossible
to lean close. To open our arms
every morning in the name of small survivals
the bougainvillea climb up to our knees;
later in the belligerent gleam of muscular
limos, we examine the ego
surveillance cameras and whirlpool baths
the Occident wavers
outside, a blue wind
uniforms
plastic chairs turned toward the void
between the lips small dexterous
I
s
by the thousands tormented
fists, palms primed for stones and backhand caresses
later, white piano
throat ardent, I know:
a life at the keyboard’s well worth
the sincere shadow of a voice
right up to the eardrums the unfurling
why speak without shivers
the becoming of water the thought
of massacres
the silence framed field of light
as for the trees
that’s all we do we count the rings
count up the bodies of women at dawn
particles of soul in the air
by the pool: we were saying here’s a water
of America and of
takeoff
here’s a viable me
a devouring mouth in the heat wave
rest easy
the white piano soothes no one
in the absolute
we are very solo
with an intensity of
adieu
‘John Cage was interested in the piano as a percussion instru-
ment, inserting various objects between the strings, such as
screwdrivers, keys, coca-cola bottles,
in a technique called
prepared piano
’
it’s a piano’s shadow
ache smooth unceasing
of piano piano