This translation was funded by the Canada Council for the Arts

      Translation Grants program. The publisher would also like to thank,

      for their support, the Block Grant Programs of the Canada Council

      for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. We also acknowledge the

      Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry

      Development Program.

      This epub edition published in 2010. Electronic ISBN 978 1 77056 166 3.

      LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

      Brossard, Nicole, 1943-

      [Cahier de roses & de civilisation. English]

      Notebook of roses and civilization / Nicole Brossard; translated

      by Robert Majzels and Erin Mouré. -- 1st ed.

      Poems.

      Translation of: Cahier de roses & de civilisation.

      ISBN 978-1-55245-181-6

      I. Majzels, Robert, 1950- II. Mouré, Erin, 1955- III. Title.

      PS8503.R7C3413 2007 C841′.54 C2007-901568-9

      Apparition of Objects

      winter water blue melt backlit

      life suddenly in thin chemise

      steadfast

      in questions and old silences

      in the puzzle of proper nouns

      and barking city: February

      slow eyelashes that beckon to love

      and spinning tops

      foliage of word for word

      gentleness that evades meaning

      plunge into the dark

      with metronome

      crabs eels intestines

      legs and antennae

      destiny you said it

      from memory

      with a single verb

      the thousand and one possibilities of the toe, the foot

      the ankle

      images in the subway glued to each other

      faces pressed against the whys

      the saliva the fingernails

      it all goes beyond

      adverbs and bones

      the future the future

      naked things design

      audacity vertical

      a woman in panties

      half-spoken surrounded

      by syntax and paintings

      dark eyebrows

      a starlet sings

      an amphetamine clenched in her teeth

      fire close to dying

      at the edge of a forest

      kiss that counts

      someone standing

      before an accident

      of cars and fiction

      under the eyelid:

      time’s measuring tape

      dust in equilibrium

      peoples and their signatures

      their faces more alive

      than crabs and pigeons in the shade

      of cherry trees

      poetry drawn back from daring

      fiction if you ask me

      hazelnut: image of an old

      tomb with a squirrel

      a photo repeated that sparks a taste

      for pleasure with a grain of salt

      on the tongue

      a photo repeated

      a stack of selves archived

      big blue armchairs

      their cloth arms worn down

      by memory and odours

      that intoxicate. Retina,

      adjust your thoughts

      emergency staircase on a slant

      with slow blue flung at the sky

      window and woman smiling

      the rust the steel, broken panes

      of America the colour of graffiti

      then in slow motion: tulips appear

      spinal cord

      strange archives

      on the iron rails

      of a century the mud

      of a day the immensity

      Sombre: night flower or calculated shadow brief flame: hypothesis

      Feinte speak reflection seen through glasses all words are ribbons

      reading lèvres micro i know the answer poems that demand we open the fire the heart: devour me

      palace and ice

      parentheses (duvet)

      orange, epidermis

      pillowcases

      i beg of you: answer

      birds pepper-coloured

      a flight of silence with clouds

      distant. I retrace my steps

      touch here a woman’s arm

      tiny algae that enter

      gastronomy

      blue water imbued water

      always another beginning

      the lemon the martini the olive

      all that amuses

      then came night with its lampshades

      describe the light

      touch tomorrow

      the immense everyday furled in the iris

      a morning

      of found orchids

      Soft Link 1

      It’s fears slow and fascinating that enter life each morning at coffee time while she wonders if tomorrow there’ll be war and brusquely as she does each morning slices bread and cheese. It’s gestures of uncontrollable avidity that proliferate in the throng and its worldly febrility, its parquet fever on the trading floor and stage. It’s hesitations, heart cries that crisscross broad avenues full of shade and dust that attract and make us think of our legs and elbows, our knees too when desire bumps and bounces words and feelings upward, it’s simple things with prefixes like cyber or bio that hold thoughts fast, float them a moment