LE LIVRE DES MUTATIONS
Dans le wagon-restaurant
le fortune cookie conseillait sobrement:
N’ajoutez aucun Bonsa
à votre jardin.
Je ne laisserai donc plus entrer
une nouvelle arborescence dans ma vie.
Ses branches déploieraient
Quatre saisons de petites tristesses.
Le sentiment laqué de ce qui s’en va,
Le noir tunnel de ce qui s’en vient.
Le bruit grinçant de ce qui ne peut venir.
Le silence saccad de ce qui ne veut partir.
Mon esprit calque aujourd’hui
le petit arbre du biscuit.
Aucune tige ne peut s’y ramifier
sans qu’elle soit aussitôt réprimée,
si étroite et ténue
s’idéalise ma précarité.
Cette intrication avec le Monde
que chinoise chaque lendemain
m’abandonnera jusqu’au lointain matin,
au rêve métallique d’une gare de triage.
Départ sonne trop final.
En Partance dévoile mon entêtement,
empêtré dans le moule d rout
de son départ.
BOOK OF CHANGES
In the dining-car
the fortune cookie soberly advised:
Do not add any bonsai
to your garden.
Therefore I will not allow any new
Arborescence to enter my life.
Its branches would deploy
Four seasons of small sorrows.
The lacquered sense of that which is going,
The dark tunnel of that which comes.
The grinding sound of that which can’t arrive.
The staccato silence of that which
doesn’t want to leave.
My mind today traces
the little arbre du biscuit.
No stem can branch out
without quickly being repressed
so narrow and tenuous
is my idealized precariousness.
This intricacy with the World
That every new day complicates
will forsake me until the distant morning,
in the metal dream of a railway yard.
Departure sounds too final.
En partance, betrays my stubbornness
entangled in the foggy pattern
of its departure.
Author’s Bio
PAUL-GEORGES LEROUX has published books of poetry and short stories. As a screenwriter, he wrote and co-wrote for both fiction and documentary film. He has travelled the world and lived in Iceland, France and Greece. His poetry has appeared in magazines such as Mouvances, DesRails, Les Cahiers Tristan Tzara, Vallum, Les Saisons littéraires. Among his works are: Runes, The Whales are waiting, Les Clefs du monde, Mon ami Diogène. He lives in Montreal.