the need to leave

Orchestrate the departure, pull out the sails
for the unbelievable for what has not yet been seen
it’s already tomorrow
this sand is fresh on which it’s so easy to go astray
the rainfall is cold with crippling noises
midnight sounds under the heels of women
midnight sounds like a hollow pebble
and calls the wild and its cold machine-guns
the new couplets of the angel’s secular war

for the time being
the man pretends to be at a standstill
the secret of the undertow haunts the hour of departure
the sweet scent of your skin colour of sky
hidden garden
peopled with the silence of tenderness

Toward the Rising Sun covers more than fifteen years of poetic writing by Robert Giroux. Included in this collection are Voice Gymnastics (2001), Toward the Rising Sun (2002), And Yet (2010), and Standing on Objects (2014). Giroux deliberately flirts with narrative prose, toys with sentence rhythms and breaks, and adheres to poetic syntax and voice. This attraction for story-telling and discourse is Robert Giroux’s response to Stéphane Mallarmé’s verse crisis.

Robert Giroux taught at Sherbrooke University for twenty-five years. Parallel to his teaching career, he was the publisher of Editions Triptyque between 1980-2016. He was also part of the editorial committee of the magazine Moebius. Author of more than a dozen books, Giroux initiated his writing with a book dedicated to Stéphane Mallarmé in 1978. He has given conferences in Canada and Europe and is a serious analyst of popular songs and music. He lives in Montreal.

The translator, Antonio D’Alfonso, is an award-winning author and translator.