April is National Poetry Month, and to mark the occasion we'll be sharing some of our favourite poems from collections we've published over the years. Today's poem is "AS IF . . ." by Herménégilde Chiasson and translated by Jo-Anne Elder from the collection To live and die in Scoudouc.

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"AS IF . . ."
by Herménégilde Chiasson, translated by Jo-Anne Elder

To the stronger
To more than before
To the much softer April breeze
To clouds that linger
To those who make snow
To those who make nothing
To those who make music
To my eyes that cannot stop opening
To my hair on strike against zeal
To the leaves held prisoner by their trees
To crucified paintings flattened against walls
To my feet suffocating in their boots
To your body pinned to the landscape
To your image
To the fade out fade in fade around and back and forth
To the bye-byes
To teletypes that breed banal poems and weep at night
To automobiles and their cargo of human flesh
To snowflakes yes!
To all the snowflakes one by one
To the snowflakes that fall as we would fall into
celestial sorrow and the purity of snow, the bed of snow
like a wide clearing of noodles
like a river of soup encased in aluminium
And I open my heart like a wooden star with its arms sawn off
And I say the gates of heaven will open too.

Grab your own copy of To live and die in Scoudouc here, or check out the rest of our poetry collection here.