By BERTRAND LAVERDURE
Translated by SLP
Poems appear below in English and the original French.
Translator’s note
I stumbled on these poems, fairly literally, in a bookstore in Québec.
I immediately recognized the hyper-connected world M. Bertrand Laverdure writes of—the new networks of pop culture and politicians and internet also familiar to me as an American, and the older networks of gargantuan trees, shaky trees, trees above streams and children playing and park benches and promotional flyers and guidewires. I recognized the surreality of his world. Of the double-address, where each poem is an epistle both to a specific tree with a clear local history, and to figures from cartoons (Skeletor), film (Poltergeist), myth (Penelope), classic literature (Gatsby), and more. The surreality where each tree and literary figure is also “a jpeg,” and where plugging devices into outlets, or each other, mirrors trees (the French word for plugged in is “branché”).
As a translator, I worked to keep the electricity of these poems alive. The magic of the diction seems to come from the alchemy of the colloquial, the surreal, the incredibly concrete, and the philosophically abstract. They are imbued with the natural world, the technological, and our more complex social inventions of story and politics. I sought to remain as true to the original syntax and diction and meaning as possible, while also conveying the sprawling modifying phrases and dependent clauses that French lends itself to. I found creative solutions where simple adjectives would not convey the specificity of the original. My favorites are the hyphenate phrases that capture the nuance of the original but keep the “thrust” of the pace, as Bertrand calls it.
In what seems a validation of M. Laverdure’s descriptions of our hyper-connected world, I looked him up on social media. We now collaborate on sharing these translations. Thanks to him for literally proofreading this selection, and for writing it in the first place.
—SLP
LETTRE À LA SOUCHE DU PEUPLIER DE CAROLINE DU PARC LAFONTAINE
Cher Black Star,
On ne pense plus qu’avec l’imposture de la vitesse. Cent ans de pourfendu, allégé par l’hiver, délesté par l’oubli.
On ne m’écoute pas ici. Je ne suis qu’un refrain. Une espèce de sifflement aigu.
Dans l’antichambre, plusieurs de mes yeux fermés s’interrogent. Je n’ai rien fait pour toi, un peu à gauche de la photo, mon sourire vraiment absent.
En guise de compassion, je te lègue mes derniers échecs. Ma décrépitude a un aspect ciré, très imperméable. Je vis dans la poudrerie, mal lu, avec ma viralité.
Cher peuplier, on ne choisit pas sa mort ni sa fonction, l’abondance des années n’est que noblesse pourrie, quelque chose qui nous freine.
LETTER TO THE STUMP OF THE CAROLINA POPLAR AT PARC LA FONTAINE
Dear Black Star,
Any more, we think only with the duplicity of speed. One hundred years of harsh criticism, lightened by winter, relieved by forgetting.
They don’t listen to me here. I am nothing but a refrain. A species of high-pitched whistling.
In the antechamber, several of my closed eyes interrogate themselves. I have done nothing for you, a little to the left of the photo, my smile truly absent.
Instead of compassion, I bequeath you my last failures. My decay a waxed aspect, quite impenetrable. I live in the gun powder snow, poorly read, with my virality.
Dear poplar, we choose neither our death nor our function, the wealth of years nothing but rotting nobility, something that slows us.
LETTRE À l’ÉRABLE ARGENTÉ DEVANT MA FENÊTRE
Cher Valérian,
Tu as la migraine des exploits, les écureuils-sommeils dans ton intrication verte.
À tes pieds on dépose les restes d’un monde, porté par ses franges lisibles.
Sénior dans ta tale d’herbes folles, tu diriges tes bras d’orchestre tendre.
En arrachant une partie de ta pelure, élément de marque, je me convaincs d’être sec.
Denrées du ciel, abat-jour de niveau trois, je m’inventerai des angoisses neuves, une performance de théâtre nô, pour te garder en santé dans ma tête d’agitation.
LETTER TO THE SILVER MAPLE IN FRONT OF MY WINDOW
Dear Valerian,
You have the migraine of exploits, squirrels-asleep in your green entanglement.
At your feet they place the rest of a world, carried by its legible fringes.
Elder, in your patch of mad grasses, you conduct the tender orchestra of your arms.
Tearing off a part of your skin—ingredient of scar—I convince myself to go dry.
Foodstuff of the sky, lampshade of the third level, I will invent for myself new anxieties, a Noh play, to keep you healthy in my head of agitation.
LETTRE AU JEUNE GINGKO BILOBA DU PARC MORGAN
Cher Poltergeist,
Tu es né à l’Assomption, au milieu de la résistance. Tu es le fumeux écran des dérivations de nos horloges baroques. Ton cran est horloge. Ta plasticité est poudre notoire. Nous parlons de plus en plus simplement, en secouant les éventails, corolles vertes aux ans vissés.
Nous parlons avec simplicité sur une vague déferlant élimant les heures.
Plus vieux que l’eau qui gèle dans nos gloires risibles, tu es la seule loi qui compte dans un monde d’énervements.
Avec tes frères du parc Morgan, vous êtes les esprits qui reviennent.
LETTER TO THE YOUNG GINGKO BILOBA IN MORGAN PARK
Dear Poltergeist,
You were born at the Assumption, in the midst of the resistance. You are the hazy screen of branch circuits in our eccentric clocks. Your notch a clock. Your malleability a notorious gunpowder. We speak more and more simply, shaking fans, green corollas of adhering years.
We speak with simplicity of a swelling wave wearing away the hours.
Older than the water-become-ice in our laughable claims to fame, you are the only law that matters in a world of annoyances.
With your brothers in Morgan Park, you are the spirits who return.
LETTRE À l’IMMENSE BROUSSIN DE L’ÉRABLE ARGENTÉ RUE SICARD
Chère dette collective,
Je passe si souvent devant ton miroir. Pas un de nous ne lâche la plaie des yeux. Ta loupe nous inspecte.
Dans ton cageot de ciment, soulevé par la houle terreuse, tu indique le niveau de notre endettement.
Cette longue pièce sans personnage, sans décor, lisse de ses cheveux baudelairiens, ce crachat vivace nous rappelle qu’il y a des étapes à suivre pour mourir selon l’insigne.
Qu’avec le droit de parole, nous avons perdu la liberté du silence, le murmure imaginé des cellules.
Tes racines, je les ai vues un peu comme on regarde le brouillard, nos millénaires de paroles enlacées dans tes crevasses.
LETTER TO THE HUGE BURL ON THE SILVER MAPLE IN RUE SICARD
Dear collective debt,
I pass so often in front of your mirror. Not one of us drops our calamity-of-eyes. Your lens inspects us.
In your cement crate, raised by earth-heave, you tell the level of our debt.
This long play without characters, scenery—smooth, of Baudelairean hair—this lively spit reminds us there are steps to follow in order to die according to the insignia.
Only with the right of speech, we have lost the liberty of silence, the imagined murmur of cells.
Your roots—I’ve seen them a bit as one looks at the fog, our millennia of intertwined words in your cracks.
LETTRE AU GRAND SAULE PLEUREUR DORÉ SUR LAFONTAINE COIN MORGAN
Cher Skeletor,
C’est l’hiver et tu es nu. Tu distribues tes os mous de doigts noueux autour de ton tronc de vieux printemps. Squelette marin, créature des profondeurs, tu fais claquer le froid sur ton instrument à fanons.
Tes baguettes couleur safran flattent mes rêveries circulaires. La rue est un brocanteur ligneux qui n’annonce pas ses prix. Une colonie de sacs qui ménage ses conclusions. Tu es la vigie d’un ruisseau mort.
Paisible comme une descente en apnée dans un gouffre bleu, tu colores ma vigueur.
LETTER TO THE LARGE GOLDEN WEEPING WILLOW ON LAFONTAINE AT THE CORNER OF MORGAN
Dear Skeletor,
It’s winter, and you’re nude. You hand out your soft bones of knobby fingers, all around your trunk of old springtime. Sailor skeleton, creature of depths, you make the cold crack on your instrument of whalebone.
Your saffron-colored sticks flatter my circular daydreams. The road is a second-hand dealer of wood who doesn’t mark their prices. A colony of bags, spare with its conclusions. You are the lookout post of a dead stream.
Calm like a descent, breath held, into a blue abyss, you color my power.
Born in 1967, Bertrand Laverdure is a poet, novelist, librettist, and Wikipedist, and was the Poet of the City of Montréal from 2015 to 2017. His poetry publications include Cascadeuse, Lettres en forêt urbain: Le projet Xanadu, Ce livre ne s’adresse qu’à 0,00005% de la population, and Un herbier de Montréal des poètes et des bédéistes, a collection on the flora of Montréal authored by a collective of poets and cartoonists. His most recent collection is 2024’s Opéra de la déconnexion. Laverdure’s opera librettos include an adaptation of Victor Hugo’s L’Homme qui rit, presented at the Classica Festival in 2023 and published by Dramaturges éditeurs. His latest original opera, about Sarah Bernhardt’s visit to Montreal in 1917, will be presented at the Classica Festival in 2026.
slp is a Mad/Madqueer/genderqueer/queer poet, songwriter, musician, and educator living in Colorado. They can be found under-promoting their most recent album or hermette-ing with their Smith-Corona typewriter and their melancholia. Their manuscripts have been finalists multiple times for the Ahsahta Sawtooth Competition, Slope Book Prize, chapbook competitions at Ashahta and Gazing Grain, and the 2024 UNLV Black Mountain Institute’s Witness Literary Award for creative nonfiction; they were also semifinalists in the Wisconsin Brittingham-Pollak Prizes. You can find more of their work in the Taggart tribute at Jacket2, Better: Culture & Lit, Denver Quarterly, burntdistrict, Denver Syntax, Bear Review, HIVES Buzz-zine, new words {press}, Stone of Madness, and manywor(l)ds. They produce music and perform as @maudlynmonroe bc they have so many emotions.
