I walk absorbed by the augmented reality
in all the angles of singularity
we’ll soon find out if
all that happens is necessary
the depths of love that stream
other depths made for survival
thoughts cries and antiquity
in a single gulp of the present
embroiled in exquisite night
we’ll soon find out if other
retorts if the others
will mount in mirrors
old goodbyes discharged
between characters, trompe-
l’œil
joy of illusion
we’ll soon find out if the iris if it will all fly
right to Vicenza
Shade of the Ephemeral Without Familiarity
all this energy
mass of silence
obstinately feverish
almost, our death often
revives language
without distance and without avowal
our nature
Streaming (continued)
between roots and ravines
sadness has tenderness
freefall of the living self
from under the void
we’ll soon find out if the pain
if silence if fervour at the turning point
if the trampling the upper calves
if a ‘tremulous ladder of tears’*
streams beyond naming
*Federico García Lorca, quoting Juan Calimacho
I let go dying
perfection change
following in my wake: water fountains glaciers
muqarnas under the celestial vault
pink hip of the muquères
friendship, my heart awash duende
also those rare dangers that enthrall
in a single navigation
I let go dying
what will we bring into existence
several longtime
heat of your skin, aorta waiting
in time ready to pounce
done dying language embroiled in the bones
clouds of small aches that trap in mid-flight
space vaulted in its angles of purity
Streaming
the volcano, will we talk again
of nanomarbles of glass
of their invisible slowness abysmal until they reach us
will we talk again of all the metals we brush against
in the name of music and perfection
I touch on all the questions
I bathe the hours
because flesh because one day we must
speak of meat and of happiness
I let go dying
the yourselves and digital dialogues
eyes charged with an intensity of adieu
manuscripts of ephemera in plain sight
each of us swept up in our joy will glide
fingers keyboard clamour
in the night of savoir-vie
Nicole Brossard is a poet, novelist and essayist who has published more than thirty books since 1965, including These Our Mothers, Lovhers, Mauve Desert and Baroque at Dawn. She has won two Governor General’s Awards for poetry, as well as le Prix Athanase-David and the Canada Council’s Molson Prize. Her most recent collection in English, Notebook of Roses and Civilization, also translated by Robert Majzels and Erín Moure, was nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize. She lives in Montreal.
About the Translators
Erín Moure is a poet and translator from French, Spanish, Galician and Portuguese; she has published seventeen books of poetry. Her work has received the Governor General’s Award, the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, the A. M. Klein Prize, and has been a three-time finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize. Her most recent book of poetry is The Unmemntioable (2012).
Robert Majzels is a novelist, poet, playwright and translator. He is the author of the full-length play This Night the Kapo (Playwrights Canada Press), and four novels, most recently Apikoros Sleuth (The Mercury Press, 2004) and The Humbugs Diet (The Mercury Press, 2007).
This EPUB edition produced at the Coach House on bpNichol Lane.
The print edition of this book is typeset in Albertan and Sympathique.
Albertan was designed by the late Jim Rimmer of New Westminster, B.C., in 1982. He drew and cut the type in metal at the 16pt size in roman only; it was intended for use only at his Pie Tree Press. He drew the italic in 1985, designing it with a narrow fit and very slight incline, and created a digital version. The family was completed in 2005 when Rimmer redrew the bold weight and called it Albertan Black. The letterforms of this type family have an old-style character, with Rimmer’s own calligraphic hand in evidence, especially in the italic.
Printed in January 2013 at the old Coach House on bpNichol Lane in Toronto, Ontario, on Zephyr Antique Laid paper, which was manufactured, acid-free, in Saint-Jérôme, Quebec, from second-growth forests. This book was printed with vegetable-based ink on a 1965 Heidelberg KORD offset litho press. Its pages were folded on a Baumfolder, gathered by hand, bound on a Sulby Auto-Minabinda and trimmed on a Polar single-knife cutter.
Edited for the press by Susan Holbrook
Designed by Alana Wilcox
Cover image, Missa, by Dominique Blain, courtesy of the artist and the Meyers/Bloom Gallery, as photographed by Robert Wedemeyer.
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