Soft Link 3 (by Nicole Brossard)

Translated by Robert Majzels and Erin Moure

Griffin Prize for Excellence In Poetry, The (2001 - 0)

1It’s names of places, cities, climates that haunt.

2Characters. Clear mornings, a fine rain that falls all

3day, rare images from elsewhere and America, two

4natural disasters that make us close ranks amid

5corpses, it’s quiet or violet acts, mortars, ice cubes in

6glasses at cocktail hour, noise of dishes or a slight

7stutter that momentarily torments, a slap, kiss, it’s

8names of cities like Venice or Reading, Tongue and

9Pueblo, names of characters Fabrice Laure or Emma.

10Words honed over years and novels, words we spoke

11with halting breath laughing spitting sucking an olive,

12verbs we add to the pleasure of lips, to success, to

13sure death. It’s words like cheek or knee and still

14others further than we can see that leave us teetering

15on the edge of the abyss, to stretch like cats in

16morning it’s words that keep us up till dawn or make

17us flag down a cab on a weekday night when the city’s

18asleep before midnight and solitude is caught like an

19abscess in the jaw. It’s words spoken from memory,

20in envy or pride often words uttered with love while

21laying our hands behind the head or pouring a glass

22of port. It’s words whose etymology must be sought,

23then projected on a wall of sound so the cries of pain

24and sighs of pleasure that wander in dreams and

25documents lay siege to the mysterious darkness of

26the heart. It’s words like bay, hill, wadi, via, rue,

27strada, dispersed through the dictionary between

28flamboyancies and neons, burial mounds and forests.

29It’s words of the arms of the sea, ensembles of sense

30that claw or soft at our chests, cold shivers rivulets

31and fear abrupt in the back while we try to fissure the

32smooth time of the future with trenchant quotations.

33It’s words that swallow fire and life, who knows now if

34they’re Latin French Italian Sanskrit Mandarin

35Galician Arab or English, if they conceal a number an

36animal or old anguishes impatient to shoot up before

37our very eyes like cloned shadows replete with light

38and great myths.

Publication Notes

Notebook of Roses and Civilization, trans. Robert Majzels and Erin Moure (Toronto: Coach House Books, 2007). This poem is reproduced on the Griffin Prize Web Site (from a volume on the 2008 Canadian Shortlist).

RPO poem Editors

Ian Lancashire

RPO Edition

2011