For As Far as the Eye Can See Read online

  FOR AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE

  Biblioasis International Translation Series

  General Editor: Stephen Henighan

  I Wrote Stone: The Selected Poetry of Ryszard Kapuscinski (Poland)

  Translated by Diana Kuprel and Marek Kusiba

  Good Morning Comrades by Ondjaki (Angola)

  Translated by Stephen Henighan

  Kahn & Engelmann by Hans Eichner (Austria-Canada)

  Translated by Jean M. Snook

  Dance With Snakes by Horacio Castellanos Moya (El Salvador)

  Translated by Lee Paula Springer

  Black Alley by Mauricio Segura (Quebec)

  Translated by Dawn M. Cornelio

  The Accident by Mihail Sebastian (Romania)

  Translated by Stephen Henighan

  Love Poems by Jaime Sabines (Mexico)

  Translated by Colin Carberry

  The End of the Story by Liliana Heker (Argentina)

  Translated by Andrea G. Labinger

  The Tuner of Silences by Mia Couto (Mozambique)

  Translated by David Brookshaw

  For as Far as the Eye Can See by Robert Melançon (Quebec)

  Translated by Judith Cowan

  Robert Melançon

  Translated from the French by

  Judith Cowan

  BIBLIOASIS

  Copyright © Robert Melançon, 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  Originally published as Le Paradis des apparences. Essai de poemes réalistes by Éditions du Noroît, Montreal, Quebec, 2004.

  FIRST EDITION

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Melançon, Robert, 1947-

  [Paradis des apparences. English]

  For as far as the eye can see [electronic resource] / Robert Melançon ; translated by Judith Cowan.

  (Biblioasis international translation series)

  Translation of: Le paradis des apparences : essai de poèmes réalistes.

  Poems.

  Electronic monograph issued in EPUB format.

  Also issued in print format.

  ISBN 978-1-92742-819-1

  I. Cowan, Judith II. Title. III. Title: Paradis des apparences.

  English. IV. Series: Biblioasis international translation series

  PS8576.E455P3713 2013 C841’.54 C2012-907686-4

  Edited by Stephen Henighan

  Copy-edited by Dan Wells

  Typeset by Chris Andrechek

  Biblioasis acknowledges the ongoing financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Heritage, the Canada Book Fund; and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Arts Council. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada, through the National Translation Program for Book Publishing for out translation activities

  For Charlotte

  Contents

  FOR AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  Snow, over roofs, and trees, and the ground,

  in answer to the wash-tint that stands for sky,

  is brighter than this inky light of day.

  Between the post office chimney and

  the radio tower, a pigeon’s tracing

  a hyberbole, erased behind him as he flies.

  A wire-running squirrel has followed

  the telephone line across to the maple tree,

  of which he’s exploring the ramifications.

  One might search in vain for any other event

  in this theatre reduced to almost nothing,

  enclosed by mounting tiers of brick houses.

  Between the buildings a bloated sun wanders

  from window to window through a multi-storeyed

  sky ruled off in glass and metal squares.

  Sometimes a bird will hit this hardened

  space, through which the far-off clouds parade.

  The street sinks deeper into evening; cars

  inch ahead in compact lines, stopping

  at red lights that mirror the setting sun,

  then beginning again their endless

  caterpillar crawl. On the sidewalks,

  the crowd trudges past under the sightless

  gaze of mannequins in shop windows.

  A cloud of newsprint birds flies up and off

  across the square where night drifts down.

  Soon waves of workers will be pouring out

  in a swelling rush, more and more of them

  from the subway station on the southeast corner.

  A man wrapped in rags and crouching close

  by the entrance to a tower built in a single block

  of glass and metal, looks out of place with it all.

  He sets a cardboard sign in front of him.

  Cars pass, and a bus. Sunlight rinses down

  over the cornices, runs from floor to floor and

  reaches this man, weighed down by all of space.

  A flock of pigeons sweeps down on the snow,

  pecks at bread. This morning the park

  is a rippled expanse over which the sun

  sparkles too brightly for the eye to bear. Does

  the soul retain such a blaze of whiteness? The

  soul evolves into all that it has known; everything,

  for the soul, is substance and accretion

  as soon as a semblance of order appears.

  Thus the trees become columns, holding aloft

  the dome of heaven between walls of wind,

  yet this temple collapses immediately

  in a rush of unanimous wings.

  Three birds you have no time to identify

  fly through the leafless branches of the trees

  against a backdrop of blue, of clouds, of sun.

  The bells of a church summon you to noble

  thoughts, but you do not pause for those.

  A silent Buddha, sitting under a maple tree,

  smokes meditatively while watching traffic.

  A red dog pauses at the base of a trash can, sniffs,

  leaves a few drops of urine and resumes his round.

  You exchange a look with the contemplative

  sitting on his bench. No doubt these tiny happenings

  are written in him as well, and will be erased.

  The books set out on the shelves, the sun

  outlining squares on the table,

  the bouquet of pens in a glass, a few pages

  covered with a writing difficult to read,

  crossed out. Beyond the windowpane,

  the tracery of branches, the ranks of roofs

  covered with snow, some brick walls, then

  blue space for as far as the eye can see.

  From time to time the wind lifts the red-

  and-white flag on the post office. Some pigeons

  go wheeling through the air. A squirrel runs

  along the telephone wire, then disappears.

  Above the streets, where there’s nothing

  but deserted space, the rising moon might

  as well be an aspirin tablet, awash

  in the sweep where the stars dissolve.

  The stretch of roadway is covered in dust

  with, here and there, some patches of ice.

  It all seems hard a
nd tight. How many can

  be out at this late hour, and in such cold?

  Only those few whose task it is:

  policemen, ambulance and taxi drivers,

  and others with nowhere to go, to be seen,

  motionless, in the recesses of buildings.

  We hear the cries of seagulls, which give

  the city an ocean-front air, such a long

  long way from the sea. Streaky clouds roll

  through the blue expanse of foamy crests.

  Missing are the whiff of iodine, the scent of seaweed,

  but the wind’s blowing from the northwest

  insistently. If it were to rain, all this

  would take on a thick layer of humidity

  which would make the difference. We’d close

  our eyes, we’d draw in deep breaths,

  and that would do it; turning to face

  the wind, we’d think we smelt the open sea.

  At times there’s a glimpse, down the channel of a street,

  and wedged between two rows of houses,

  of a bit of the river, like a fragment of sky

  broken off and fallen out there below the horizon.

  Some mornings, there’s a lancing glint

  or fiery gleam where the daylight’s reflected

  in its blazing mirror. It might kindle its flame

  in anyone lost from afar to its contemplation,

  but we do not stop for that; one glance

  is enough to light up the heart, and those

  whom we meet, a few steps farther along,

  will not know where this joy comes from.

  The old man stares at a fixed point in the midst

  of space, where the rest of us see nothing.

  The valley rolls to the foot of the nearby hill

  which the autumn climbs in stages, a view we praise,

  predictably, year after year. We’re right, just the

  same, to applaud all these yellows, these reds and

  pinks contrasted with the pines’ green, we’re right

  to come all this way to marvel. Above the grass

  that looks almost painted and varnished, we seem to see

  the air’s transparency, washed by the wind last night.

  Abruptly, the old man turns his back on

  what he alone has seen, that we can never know.

  Patches of light punctuate the landscape:

  street lights, traffic signals, neon signs,

  shop windows, reflections. Night envelops all of space:

  housefronts engulfed in the dark, intersections

  looking like islands, the air that seems

  laden with soot. Above the buildings floats

  a narrow crescent moon and a few stars stray

  in the smoky sky’s immensity.

  Taxis drive slowly past, and other cars which

  seem to be going nowhere, coming from nowhere.

  A man sets down a vague bag of stuff in the doorway

  of a shop, and stretches out in his weariness.

  We walked along the river’s edge to see

  the night streaming, time rushing past

  between the shores drowned in darkness.

  The wind flowed, the air flowed,

  the black that was all the immensity

  of space flowed from every side.

  We heard only the water, and felt as if

  the whole of the dark was enlarging,

  rising like a fountain and pouring back

  into itself, into the redundant blackness,

  into the rippling air, the fluid night and

  into the river lashed with reflections.

  A sphere of silence enfolds all

  these stores we’re walking past, crossing

  by turns through blocks of shadow and puddles

  of brightness falling from street lights

  and shop windows. It’s as if the air were filling

  with vague rustlings, with fleeting

  movements arising from nothing,

  from whisperings. The signs blink yellow, pink,

  and purple. The eyes of the mannequins

  stare into infinity; it’s a point somewhere

  out there in space. They’ve been posed in

  deliberately banal tableaux vivants.

  Nothing is happening in the expanse

  of blue, so perfectly blue, that has

  stretched its canvas above the streets,

  nothing but the event of the light as it

  fades towards the horizon, diffusing

  into a hemisphere without contours,

  built up out of nothing. No sooner does one try

  to focus on one point than the eye, lacking

  an object, seeking in vain for something

  to fix on, at once shifts back down

  towards the broken line of buildings,

  as if to rest against a parapet.

  Night blurs the garden, opening it out

  into a space through which one searches

  for the geometry of the constellations,

  as if some pedagogical heaven were

  going to reproduce the illustrations from

  an astronomy manual for amateurs.

  But the eye cannot distinguish the points

  that the mind knows are stars from

  those other patches of light projected

  by the windows of the waking down there,

  twinkling at the rim of the horizon,

  out beyond the formless expanse.

  Here on this side, pink faces smile

  with all their rows of perfect white teeth

  from under helmets of blond hair.

  Across from them, bloodied bodies are seen,

  crowds in black and white brandishing

  placards, and refugees lugging bundles.

  Then there’s a tank, a missile, an explosion,

  or the head of a prime minister. A little to the side:

  breasts and buttocks. Elsewhere: cars,

  pastoral landscapes and wild animals.

  Magazine covers establish the truth of

  this world, by categories, for all tastes.

  We see rising ranks of roofs, a framework

  of branches which the late spring

  has not yet edged with leaves,

  the criss-crossing of the telephone wires,

  some patches of snow … a whitish sky

  raises its rampart up behind as in

  those naïve paintings which remain superbly

  unaware of the techniques of perspective.

  We see chimneys outlined against

  a pale sun and spills of undecided

  shadow. We see the air’s transparency,

  and the hazy dusting of the light.

  The day draws down. It’s as if the sky

  were emptying out and space folding up,

  as if the light were crumbling away like

  plaster that has never been painted,

  that’s neither white nor grey and

  that’s casting an overlay of damp.

  Seize this hour, or rather this instant,

  this passage rather, from grey to blue-black,

  as if everything were hollowing out; make

  haste to see this, which you will see once only.

  Night wafts through the air, which seems

  suddenly made of some thick substance.

  Just outside the window, a redpoll

  perches on a wire, preens for an instant

  then vanishes. Sparrows, raccoons,

  insects and spiders and squirrels from

  the miscellaneous ark of our flood

  haunt our streets, gardens and alleys,

  although theirs is not the world we know,

  our houses playing the role, no doubt,

  of hollow rocks we come bounding out of,

  dangerous animals whom it’s best to flee;

  as soon as we appear, they all f
ly off, scurry,

  scarper, melt into the air, the earth and the walls.

  Silence rounds itself over this landscape

  formed of a patch of pale wall, a hedge,

  a rivulet of grass and a few trees.

  Windows stand out as yellow rectangles.

  The night rises up. It’s as if we could hear

  the shadows spreading, little by little overtaking

  the expanse studded with street lights.

  Soon nothing will be seen but a rampart

  of bricked-up blackness, compact and flawless.

  Is this the disorder of a world’s end?

  The air carries stale perfumes which we quaff down

  as if drinking swallows of nothingness.

  All the light is radiating from the lemons

  in the fruit bowl in the middle of the table,

  which some avocadoes, pears and kiwis

  enhance with green, copper and velvet patches.

  Light falling from the window finds focus there,

  everything arranged round this ideal centre:

  the china cabinet, the buffet, the empty chairs,

  solid walnut pieces, polished, almost black,

  striped with reflections. The newspaper and the mail

  are white and light-brown rectangular

  patches, tossed casually on the corner, where

  the cat has come and stretched out on them.

  For all that, he’s not so badly dressed,

  and he’s shaved this morning, this man

  holding out his cap in the bus shelter.

  He’s mumbling a few inaudible words,

  knowing that these people, whether they give or not,

  have no wish to hear what he has to say.

  All he needs is to draw their attention,

  catch their eye and refuse to look away.

  An old woman rummages in her handbag

  and places a folded banknote in his cap.

  Immediately he stuffs it into his pocket,