Read For As Far as the Eye Can See Online
Authors: Robert MelanCon
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 winâin 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 andâ
in their placeâthe 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.
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.
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.