Sunday Poem

From "SEIZING: MIRRORS" 

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.

¶ 

Mouth that the rivers cross
—where all life is crushed, a stranger
to the wind and the night
that lift it, towards itself— 

stone carried off by the sand.
There’s no journey you return from
without your life, from its
far-off bank, coming closer. 

¶ 

Arrows plunge
into the water
and the water trembles
—the wound

on the lake’s back
obscures the night
that tried to fall.

¶ 

You thought you saw
some mauve, a little blue
mixed with the crumbs
the day casts  

over the world.
You open your mouth
open your hands
and everything that still held  

by a breath
topples inside you. 

¶ 

Tonight, the moon
slices the lake, digs
a sheer well of silence
on the horizon.  

The world trembles
—eyes closed
you cross it. 

¶ 

What shadow
undoes the dawn
hour by hour?
What fragmented  

word is it piecing back together
time after time? 

¶ 

The wind.—
and the lake
stirs suddenly, the dark
herd of waves
stampedes the bank 

melts into the earth
where our faces pass
—scattering
into dust.

From Seizing: Places (2012) by Hélène Dorion, translated by Patrick McGuinness.