Here is my first selection (of two) of favourite passages from Canadian poet Hélène Dorion's Seizing: Places. Thanks to Patrick McGuinness for the translation (and presumably for bringing it to a UK audience) and to Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese for recommending the book to me.
...the emptiness heavy on your shoulder....
*
Look only at the room
where your life echoes.
*
...soon you confuse your shadows
with your body's signs of life.
*
All around you the season
circles, like the sky's bones
like the days' cold marrow
*
...the pain death spreads
along the immaculate corridors.
*
Above the town
the sky walked its greys.
*
...the sea contemplates the island....
*
A century dispersed--the image takes shape--
in the barking carhorns
hear the scraping of oars, see
the city is waking.
...the emptiness heavy on your shoulder....
*
Look only at the room
where your life echoes.
*
...soon you confuse your shadows
with your body's signs of life.
*
All around you the season
circles, like the sky's bones
like the days' cold marrow
*
...the pain death spreads
along the immaculate corridors.
*
Above the town
the sky walked its greys.
*
...the sea contemplates the island....
*
A century dispersed--the image takes shape--
in the barking carhorns
hear the scraping of oars, see
the city is waking.
from "Seizing: Cities"
Only a few marks of other lives
are left on the edge of the days, those faces
the darkness has stopped burying.
*
The present catches up with what he remembers.
*
Dark, naked
in the century's boneyard
the tide swells.
*
You fix your eyes on the borderless window
pierced by the road
imagine the hill it explores
like a language, like a face.
from "Seizing: Shadows"
The wind. --And you're falling
through the landscape:
the silent wave
closes around your steps, your hands.
Far off the burned-out day
tilts. The birds tear up
the sky as they come
to meet you.
*
There's no journey you return from
without your life, from its
far-off bank, coming closer.
*
Some shadow in the voice
like a little sand
running. You throw back
your head: do you see
time sinking
behind your words, do you see
the patient downpour?
*
Arrows plunge
into the water
and the water trembles
--the wound
on the lake's back
obscures the night
that tried to fall.
*
Tonight, the moon
slices the lake, digs
a sheer well of silence
on the horizon.
*
What shadow
undoes the dawn
hour by hour?
What fragmented
word is piecing itself together
time after time?
*
Why
so many skies
sloping down to your mouth?
*
Is it the sea
or the island--
that your gaze dismantled?
*
You chew over
the scraps of silence
the earth left unburned.
through the landscape:
the silent wave
closes around your steps, your hands.
Far off the burned-out day
tilts. The birds tear up
the sky as they come
to meet you.
*
There's no journey you return from
without your life, from its
far-off bank, coming closer.
*
Some shadow in the voice
like a little sand
running. You throw back
your head: do you see
time sinking
behind your words, do you see
the patient downpour?
*
Arrows plunge
into the water
and the water trembles
--the wound
on the lake's back
obscures the night
that tried to fall.
*
Tonight, the moon
slices the lake, digs
a sheer well of silence
on the horizon.
*
What shadow
undoes the dawn
hour by hour?
What fragmented
word is piecing itself together
time after time?
*
Why
so many skies
sloping down to your mouth?
*
Is it the sea
or the island--
that your gaze dismantled?
*
You chew over
the scraps of silence
the earth left unburned.
from "Seizing: Mirrors"
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