Sans titre (Untitled), Translated by Alexander Rock

from Poème Sale, 2014 

Un préposé à l’entretien frotte
des lingots avec un chiffon
rescapé d’une poubelle
les coupes budgétaires
l’obligent à réutiliser
l’eau sale pour laver
les fenêtres sales
de l’économie
Comme ça
personne
ne verra
dehors
 

A custodian is polishing
ingots with a rag
redeemed from the trash
budget cuts
have forced him to wash
the economy's
filthy windows
with filthy water
so that
nobody
will see
without

Alexander Rock is a native of Montreal where he has modestly worked as a playwright and dramaturge. His translations of Québequois poets Danny Ploudre and Alain Farah have appeared in Matrix Magazine and his co-translation, along with Katia Grubisic, of Patrick Leroux’s Dialogues fantasques pour causeurs éperdue is forthcoming with Talonbooks in the fall of 2015. He is currently at work on his dissertation on the fiction of Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy at the University of Montreal.