Denise Desautels

Denise Desautels Poems

Denise Desautels Biography

Denise Desautels, born 1945 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, has since 1975 published more than 30 books of poetry and prose poetry as well as five radio plays. She has been a member of the Académie des lettres du Québec since 1995 as well as a member of the organisation committee of the international authors convention in Quebec. Her literary oeuvre is like archaeology of the intimate. She sets herself off on the search for language that evolves from its everyday usage and makes it possible to reach other people through its innate, intimate nature.)

The Best Poem Of Denise Desautels

Consolation, perhaps

She. He. His arm held aloft, a thought suspended.


What does your body say when it's still?
when it refuses to yield to the weight of the world?


To what do our bodies pretend to while trying to resist the pressure of
perpetual talk?
Our right hands, palm against palm.


Often we are two and often by clashing.


Two. To fall. To rise up. Obliterative din inside.
To search out the complex. A lengthening of dawn.
Two. Athletic. Borne on the air. With expectation.
Play. Joy. Consolation, perhaps.


Two. A lot of arms in an excessively fluid blue.
Two. A mobile architecture of gestures and shadows.
Who attempt a connection, blow through one another, caress lightly and
choose to continue.
Sometimes prop one another up.


Not always managing to forget the abuses of darkness. Outside, inside.
Near to suspicion, lightness, euphoria, metaphor.
We struggle in secret. Allow our lives to drift on a current. Mind elsewhere.
Firm hope.


Dancing is swimming.
Abandon our bodies to night's oblique line.
Solo. Blind.


A lively black head. On your left leg, your breast. Under your right armpit.
What an astonishing picture of our humanity!
Still beautiful. Still vulnerable.


Sometimes his arms above, hers close to it all, close to nothing.
Arms in front arms behind, extravagant trellis.
Facing blunt facts, our arms' extreme future.
Utopia, it seems, spreading its wings.
Three, twenty, a thousand diagonals of light.


Obscure forms moving in the indigo.
We persevere. We shake the mundane.
We observe ourselves without looking.
What's next? And beyond?


Our living bodies, far-reaching, sculpt the city.
Our arms' wingspan.
Our bodies cease moving. Sculptures.

English versions by Ken Babstock

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