The Canadian poet Albert Lozeau, who died a century ago on this date lived a life too short and painful to have rivaled the great Émile Nelligan (1879-1941), who has been often likened to Arthur Rimbaud and who bore sufferings of his own. I was delighted in 1987 when the Sherbrooke-based poetry review asked me to translate two of his poems. The first, above, was renewing itself in my mind as I flew back to Ottawa for the first time in almost five years, in the autumn of 2014.
It was late afternoon and the sun had slipped behind a veil of cirrus off to the west. As the little Embraer cut a slow arc east, there was a splendid view of the confluence of the Rideau River and, on the opposite shore in Québec, the Gatineau, both emptying into the Ottawa itself. It was a week too early for most leaves to turn, but a few trees below were touched with scarlet. For me, these sere tokens of memory were enough to evoke realms of blazing experience left behind, though the autumn’s full radiance was yet to come.
The French is available if you Duckduck “Erable rouge” + Lozeau.
Bonne St-Jean à toutes et tous.