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40 M i dw i n t er R a i n s ov er M o n t r é a l : A Vi d eo I n sta l l ati o n Hold this poem very still, so that it may be the fixed point by which we’ll measure the velocity of rain descending on the frozen St. Lawrence River. Soon, a young skater in a blue tuque will glide amid a group of fathers pushing strollers in circles around adolescent girls practicing two-foot spins until grace glows from their skin; their older brothers, briefly released from the plastic and Plexiglas of the hockey rink, will race for miles, through exhaustion, from beneath the highway overpass toward the smoking Molson brewery on the horizon. The river thickens throughout the winter, though snow limits the occasion for skating much of the season. A hard midwinter rain like this one, and then its end, sends families down the cobbled streets to gather on the banks, and skate the natural surface washed clean. They are not all characters from the Saturday Evening Post: scarves extending sideways from stupid smiles; some Québécois youth, like drunken men and boys from a Bruegel painting, who strap flattened foreleg bones of reindeer to their feet, will skate at full speed into their best friends’ bodies. ...

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