I live in the heart of a lost country
yet one I've never left I was born here I'll die here a country that is no more but follows me everywhere I'd like to get out which I couldn't do they'd like to drive me out which they couldn't do sometimes it's so small that despite its great river and its lakes it's no bigger than a teardrop and sometimes so huge it goes on forever I took possession of it at birth proud discoverer out of my mother's womb like a ca
ravel come from far beyond La Rochelle a country like the one I built in my childho
...[+++]od on Lake Saint Pierre among the cattails and reeds I put down my roots in the soil of legends so that the tree of my life draws the sap of poetry there a country of summers where fire my friend comes down from the zenith to swim with me a country of autumns where my inner forests sang flames of all colors a northern country with frosty eyes ice storm suns burning on snow a country where big flakes of snow geese melted into the pure air of spring in my country we're so crazy for beauty that meadow flowers turn into swallows and fly off on feathers of blue fragrance so crazy with music the icicles on the eves sound like a glass keyboard under little mallets of cold so crazy with magic that we see trees in January turn into great snowy owls under their down of frost so crazy for love that we stroke the skin of days and every river is a naked woman smiling on a bed of light no one dies in my country at every family gathering some of my most distant ancestors even those from 1663 from St-François du Havre de Grâce turn up with their instruments and start dancing if it happens one day I lose my lost country I'll become like the haggard homeless man who on winter nights at the end of a blind alley among trash and garbage cans makes his only home a dirty cardboard box