GABRIOLA (English version)

"... when the morning was carried away by the wings of the angel of the night..."

 

To the memory of Malcolm Lowry

Is an island not a destiny,
 

even the seagulls know,
 

they forebode the shipwreck
 

in the scent of the autumn
 

and the wet branches.
 

The night wind whispers
 

when the morning was carried away
 

by the wings of the angel of the night *
 

towards the gray solitude at the beach
 

and the lighthouse over the crisped waves
 

with a white distant persistence **
 

and the sun and wind danced through ***
 

the drunken breath of the poet,
 

who went down deep
 

to engrave letter by letter
 

an unanchored volcano with his words ****
 

at the third attempt was resurrected in a novel.
 

The same to leave the last possible eden
 

-nostalgia for delirium?… or oblivion- *****
 

to explore every corner of the purgatory
 

dark as the grave wherein my friend is laid
 

in this outlandish spot of dead civilizations. ******
 

Certainty of brightness, promise of lightness *******
 

walk along the beach of Gabriola
 

albeit only an island, not a destiny.

 

Jules Etienne

 

* From Under the Volcano, page 223

** From October Ferry to Gabriola, page 4

*** From Ultramarine, page 82

**** From October Ferry to Gabriola, page 4

***** From Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend, page 3

****** From Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend, page 212

******* From Under the Volcano, page 129  

 The photo is a sunrise at Whalebone Beach, in Gabriola Island.