My heart lifts the stardust, the question of origins, then faints.
I see figurines of distressed girls between veils of rain shaken out over the horizon. I hear the lapping of the tongue deep within the empty shells. I witness the crumbling of daily gestures between the walls.
Vocal cords are untangled on the sound-table, in front of the stones that were set on the shore, among the sea buckthorn.
***
The river speaks to me in my mother tongue and breathes to the rhythm of my blood. It lays out my mobile shadow over the surface of the landscape.
It deports me to an exile from dream. From reason. Abrasive matter of the world, it elongates light infinitely.
Within the void of the air some of the air vibrates. Things are balanced on the tips of bones, raw, aligned on the structure of the blue.
Do not reveal my dreams. I’m shutting the earth’s curtains. Fallen from its plinth, it crumbles at the edges between the clouds.
I leave behind the key to my room, some fixations in the light of the screen.
Sculptures of wind.
***
At the behest of night he would put away his
tools,
his scythe, his axe, his rake in the shade
of the hangar where trembled still the shadow of
the son,
the eldest, hanging from the highest beam of the
attic.
Thus I sort out the syllables of winter hours
to experience the sensation of time the beating
of the heart with each sentence the passing
pulsation
and the absolute certainty of my disappearance
in the clarity of ink when language sometimes
as it passes the river illuminates it.
***
Once the books have vanished from within your
memory
and Segale’s shadows and voices have drowned in
the sea,
will you know to spurt out, between seaweed and
chaos,
between transhumance and agony will you know to
awaken
your dead, father and mother reconciled in ash,
will you know to lead to slumber in your drowsy
soul
as a nightlight, the melancholy of being in the
world?
Without a reprieve. Without a future.
[see Jérôme Melançon's review of Paul Chanel Malenfant's work here]
Paul Chanel Malenfant is a writer. He has published over thirty books on, and superimposing, poetry, fiction, and essays. Des ombres portées was translated by Marylea MacDonald and published by Guernica in 2009 as If this Were Death. His collections have been notably awarded the Governor General Literary Award and the Alain Grandbois prize. His collection Chambres d’échos, published with Le Noroît in 2021, was awarded the Grand Prix Quebecor of the Festival international de poésie de Trois-Rivières. Paul Chanel Malenfant has been a member of the Académie des lettres du Québec since 2008. These poems appear on pages 50, 58, 96, and 109 of Au passage du fleuve (Le Noroît, 2024).
Jérôme Melançon lives in oskana kâ-asastêki / Regina, SK. His translations have appeared mostly in periodicities and he is currently at work on a translation of a collection by Denise Desautels. His third chapbook, Bridges Under the Water (2023), was published with above/ground press, as were Tomorrow’s Going to Be Bright (2022) and Coup (2020). His most recent poetry collection is En d’sous d’la langue (Prise de parole, 2021), and he has also published two books of poetry with Éditions des Plaines, De perdre tes pas (2011) and Quelques pas quelque part (2016), as well as one book of philosophy, La politique dans l’adversité (Metispresses, 2018). He has edited books and journal issues, and keeps publishing academic articles that have nothing to do with any of this. He’s on various social media under variations of @lethejerome.
