Things That Fall by Denise Desautels

In French, Tombeau de Lou. At its origin, the death of the childhood friend, the chosen sister, swept away by a sudden cancer. She was fifty-three. Like the poet. The one who remains, the survivor, the inconsolable woman. That's the anecdote. Afterwards — if an afterwards is possible, the urgency presses, the need to find words for the pain and questions that death raises, strewn at random in revolt, in violence, in memory, in mourning and in dread. To translate the hasty metamorphosis of the ever-so-living into the ever-so-dead. To give meaning, albeit fragile, albeit mortal, to the meaningless. To relate this little story of intimate suffering — all in all, banal — to the great history of international proportions. In this literary tomb of eleven songs, the need to attempt a utopian reconciliation: embrace all at once the immensity of the emptiness, the chaos, our fragile humanity, and our ardent desire for resistance.