Brossard - White Piano

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Between the verbs quivering and streaming, White Piano unfolds its variations like a musical score. With a play of resonance between pronouns and persons, between prose and poetry, and narrating a constellation of questions, this new book of poetry by the internationally renowned Nicole Brossard offers readers a language that cultivates its own craters of fire and savoir-vie.

first English edition

English translation copyright Robert Majzels and Ern Moure, 2013

Original French text copyright Nicole Brossard, 2011

Originally published in 2011 in French as Piano blanc by Les Editions LHexagone

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada, through the National Translation Program for Book Publishing, for our translation activities. Coach House Books thanks, for their support, the Block Grant Programs of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. We also appreciate the support of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Brossard, Nicole, 1943

[Piano blanc. English]

White piano / Nicole Brossard ; translated by Robert Majzels and Erin Mour. 1st English ed.

Poems.

Translation of: Blanc piano.

ISBN 978-1-77056-345-2

I. Majzels, Robert, 1950- II. Mour, Erin, 1955- III. Title. IV. Title: Piano blanc. English.

PS8503.R7P51813 2013 C841.54 C2012-908532-4

This ebook was produced with http://pressbooks.com.

This title is available as a print book: ISBN 978-1-55245-273-8

We have to confront our own variation.

Michel Serres

its a quiet Wednesday
no one clamours
light reaches the body
coils round the wrists
darkness held in custody

softly we talk
of slipping toward the brink
disfigured
far from humanity

in the morning Ive a number in my feelings
an eye of second person plural
a notion with me fed by emotion
by animal kingdom and by azul

now you watch out for the commas
that erase and raise the night
now when the time comes you caress
a sheet of water and its logic of conflagration

I say what they say
about not telling lies
its infinitely
risky, and we breathe

one hour before summer
night had a body
as in certain phrases
at the edge of the universe

language Ill say yes
from the top of my rib cage
language will you come
out and unearth the salt the certitude

The Use of Tiny Vertigos

whoever still insists on clinging to the real
to stammer in the repertoire
of guns and the serial loops of others
upright our body doesnt think any less
sea, hunger, the mysterious manoeuvre
of air and its fabulous leaps in the chest
at the speed of shadow
to break free of the self you have to toe the line
between centuries and galaxies celestial hopscotch

our mythology of millennial night
a few names of beasts with hearts ripped out
fruity transparency of our sexes

it all breaks free of the self alive too brief

The Inside of Someone

I say the inside of someone not knowing
out of what muscle bone or ligament
if its a line of horizon in the brain
or knots of night in the throat
not knowing if its tender
or vast word with a name

The Inside of Someone: version2

first an idea of darkness
then I have hands
a few syllables jettisoned
but rough tide of morning returns
and the inner world is outspread
with shores of organic silence

The Inside of Someone: other version

okay so its thick
with images of slow skiffs and cliffs
in the midst of dead languages
okay so too much absolute crashes in the gut

The Inside: version3

even if no ones there
the essential rolls eager with innards and infancy
draws its own lines of life
anecdotes not quite cannibal
even in the absence of pronouns
the essential absorbs the heat
of the frescoes of frenzy and confession

The Inside

without lux(ury) language strains unbearable
so I move quick
if we slow down if we erase I insist
Ive just got to juggle
elsewhere slowly soaking softens me

come on narration I await
your indiscreet questions your ideas of having a blast
its so simple, and pain we can recount
to substitute the carnivores

The Inside Reversed

grammar of echo round constellated
of peoples in flight,
city legs knees hurry up cited

then hope of superstition
a comfort of the end of the world

out there a rich foam of intimate life
spelled sky that thunders right up to the pupils

too much love and not enough
afterward we say its the North
and we go to bed with a woman
in the silence slow foliage
we sleep right through the night
without punctuation or sepulchre
in the machine to inundate the world

suddenly Im where the wind begins
Id like to understand
mammals, the humanity that runs
in the veins
the hand-to-hand combat of grief
the drowned world the images of farewell
how our lips
and the huge side of the sea

other times its suspicious I become
a generation a vine

a cascade of shadows and of dialogues

HOTEL FURAMA, L.A.

in the lounge white piano
a work in imagination
curled fingers centred over the keyboard
no night can live up to night and its story

Hotel Furama
the dictatorship rose up
all blue, all night
nuggets of interdiction

it would be dark
in a mirror at night it would be impossible
to lean close. To open our arms

every morning in the name of small survivals
the bougainvillea climb up to our knees;
later in the belligerent gleam of muscular
limos, we examine the ego

surveillance cameras and whirlpool baths
the Occident wavers
outside, a blue wind
uniforms
plastic chairs turned toward the void

between the lips small dexterous I s
by the thousands tormented
fists, palms primed for stones and backhand caresses

later, white piano
throat ardent, I know:
a life at the keyboards well worth
the sincere shadow of a voice
right up to the eardrums the unfurling

why speak without shivers
the becoming of water the thought
of massacres
the silence framed field of light

as for the trees
thats all we do we count the rings
count up the bodies of women at dawn
particles of soul in the air

by the pool: we were saying heres a water
of America and of takeoff
heres a viable me
a devouring mouth in the heat wave

rest easy
the white piano soothes no one
in the absolute
we are very solo
with an intensity of adieu

John Cage was interested in the piano as a percussion instru
ment, inserting various objects between the strings, such as
screwdrivers, keys, coca-cola bottles,
in a technique called prepared piano

its a pianos shadow
ache smooth unceasing
of piano piano

PIANO FRONTERA

the vultures had already eaten her tongue and eyes
a witness

fence we called it barbed wire