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samedi 11 février 2012

Paths and thingscape (Margaret Atwood)



Those who went ahead
of us in the forest
bent the early trees so that they grew to signals:

the trail was not
among the trees but
the trees

and there are some who have dreams
of birds flying in the shapes
of letters; the sky's codes;

and dream also
the significance of numbers
(count petals of certain flowers)

In the morning I advance
through the doorway : the sun
on the bark, the inter-twisted branches,

here;
a blue movement in the leaves, dispersed
calls; no trails; rocks
and grey tufts of moss

the petals of the fireweed
fall where they fall

I am watched like an invader
who knows hostility but
not where

The day shrinks back from me

When will be
that union and each thing
(bits of surface broken by my foot step)
will without moving move
around me into its place


vendredi 3 février 2012

Patroling Barnegat (Walt Whitman)



WILD, wild the storm, and the sea high running,
Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering,
Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing,
Waves, air, midnight, their savagest trinity lashing,
Out in the shadows there milk-white combs careering,
On beachy slush and sand spirts of snow fierce slanting,
Where through the murk the easterly death-wind breasting,
Through cutting swirl and spray watchful and firm advancing,
(That in the distance! is that a wreck? is the red signal flaring?)
Slush and sand of the beach tireless till daylight wending,
Steadily, slowly, through hoarse roar never remitting,
Along the midnight edge by those milk-white combs careering,
A group of dim, weird forms, struggling, the night confronting,
That savage trinity warily watching.


jeudi 27 octobre 2011

Disembarking at Quebec



Is it my clothes, my way of walking,
the things I carry in my hand
- a book, a bag with knitting-
the incongruous pink of my shawl

this space cannot hear

or is it my own lack
of conviction which makes
these vistas of desolation,
long hills, the swamps, the barren sand, the glare
of sun on the bone-white
driftlogs, omens of winter,
the moon alien in day-
time a thin refusal

The others leap, shout

Freedom!

The moving water will not show me
my reflection.

The rocks ignore.

I am a word
in a foreign language.

(Poem by Margaret Atwood in "The Journals of Susanna Moodie")