Nicole Brossard

TRANS. BY CYNTHIA HOGUE & SYLVAIN GALLAIS

Cities with or without war

cities with standing soldiers
always frightening among flames
and monuments, a soldier facing a madman
a madman facing a soldier
with a shot a sharp blow
as if earth were peopled by goats

then quickly cities crossed in ten minutes
like Moose Jaw and Regina
on the plain your finger touching dawn

———

cities where you’re always close 
to someone standing among the archives
to recapture her mother’s face 
in a stroke of memory and horizon

Cynthia Hogue’s most recent collections are Revenance (2014) and In June the Labyrinth (2017), both from Red Hen Press. Her third co-translation is Nicole Brossard’s Lointaines (Omnidawn, 2022). Among her honors are two NEA Fellowships, a Fulbright fellowship, and the Witter Bynner Translation Fellowship at the Santa Fe Art Institute. She lives in Tucson.