In the Light Of Read online

  swashing of conches, the chatter of glasses in bars —

  the night sky blossoming with aromatic stars,

  and more, moreover, sways like a basket let down

  opposite the slope, against our face, and we drown

  in the blue abyss blossoming below the town.

  Poles Apart (Métropolitain)

  From the Ossianic Ocean to the Straits of Indigo,

  on rose and orange sands washed by the Sky of Vino,

  crystal boulevards have sprung up, newly occupied by

  poor families who make do from market stalls: The City.

  Tumbling from the Wastes of Bitumen down the slippery slopes

  where coils of horrible fog stretch out in monstrous ropes

  across the sky that billows, rolls, descends, recedes, in all

  the sinister black smoke the oceanic pall

  can body forth, are helmets, cartwheels, bobbing bottles,

  scuttled submarines and horses’ rumps: The Battle.

  Lift your head: that arched wooden bridge; those last

  market gardens of Samaria; those masks whipped by the blast

  and reddened by the lantern on a freezing night;

  that girl gone down the river in her gaudy dress, a water-sprite;

  those luminous skulls among the rows of peas,

  and all the other mad phantasmagoria: The Rural Scene.

  Those roads bordered by railings and walls that barely contain

  their budding groves, and frightful flowers you might name

  ‘Love’ and ‘Dove’, damask roses languishing in boredom,

  properties of faery aristocracies, and foreign kingdoms,

  still receivers of the ancient music howsoever.

  And there are inns already that are closed forever.

  There are princesses; and if by now you’re not completely high,

  there’s the study of the stars: The Sky.

  That morning when, with Her, you struggled under those blows

  of snow, those green lips, those blocks of ice, those

  black banners, and blue beams of gleaming lunar length,

  those purple perfumes of the polar sun: Your Strength.

  Phases of the Moon (Phrases)

  1

  When the world has dwindled to a single dark wood

  gawped at by these four kindred eyes — to where we stood

  on a beach, two loyal children — to the musical house

  we loved to delve in — I’ll find you, little mouse.

  Should there be but one solitary old man, calm

  and bearded in his luxury — I’ll kneel before you, little ma’am.

  Should I realize every one of your memories,

  should I be she who knows the muzzle — I’ll suffocate you, little tease.

  2

  When we are strong as strong, who backs down? When gay as gay,

  who falls about with laughter? When nasty, nasty, what can they say?

  Put on your finery, and dance, and laugh. Reap and sow.

  I never could throw love out the window.

  3

  Beggar-girl, monstrous child, my counterpart! It’s all the same

  to you, these miserable women on the game,

  their wiles my quandary. O wrap me to you with that voice

  of yours, impossible voice! That flatters my despair, my vice.

  4

  Overcast morning in July. A taste of ashes

  drifts through the sweaty air. A smell of wood sleazes

  on the hearth. Fetid flowers. Chaos on the boulevards,

  canal mist dank on the fields. Why not incense and peignoirs?

  5

  I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple, garlands

  from window to window; gold chains from star to star, and I dance.

  6

  The mountain pool smokes night and day.

  What witch will loom against the pallid sunset? What spray

  of violets fall into the white décolleté?

  7

  While public funds are squandered by the great and good and proud,

  a bell of rose-coloured fire tolls in the clouds.

  8

  Reviving a pleasant taste of India ink, a black

  powder drizzles on my vigil. I consult the almanac,

  turn down the gaslight, throw myself onto the bed.

  And, turning towards the shadows of a riverbed,

  I see you, O my lovely girls, my queens, emerge

  in dripping radiance to drag me from the verge!

  Fée (Fairy)

  All for Helen, ornamental oozing saps collogued

  in virgin shadows: silent, unmoved, glittering the astral road.

  Summer’s torrid heat was given over to the mute birds,

  inevitable languor to an expensive funeral barge

  through winding estuaries of loves long dead;

  and perfumes like an evanescent freshet overlaid

  the chorus of the Timberwomen to the rumble

  of the torrent through the ruined wood, from the cowbells

  in the valleys echoing the long cries of the steppes;

  all for Helen, bushy furs and shadows quivered, bee-skeps

  oozed, the poor shivered, shimmering the celestial legends.

  And her eyes, her dancing far superior to a thousand

  precious dazzles coldly flowing in, or to the pleasure

  of that unique décor, that one and only hour.

  Demotic Nocturne (Nocturne vulgaire)

  A breath cleaves operatic breaches in the walls

  of shimmery, dilapidated marble halls,

  disperses all the boundaries of hearth and home,

  and blurs the casement windows with a faery foam.

  One foot planted on a gargoyle, shimmying along

  the grapevine, I fell into this coach whose chaise longue

  interior bespoke antique, as did the panes

  of bull’s-eye glass, the panels boasting marbled veins.

  Hearse of my sleep, my bucolic folly caravan veers on

  the verge of the overgrown high road to Bygone.

  And swirling in a window-bubble north-north-west

  I saw pale lunar figures, leaves, and breasts.

  Deep bottle blue and verdigris invade the scene,

  unhitch the horses teetering along the scree.

  This is where you whistle up the storm of Sodom,

  vicious beasts, and armies wreaking drunken bedlam.

  Postilion and dream animals, will they reprise

  themselves below the suffocating forest trees,

  to plunge me headlong in the fount of silk? And send

  us lashed across these lapping waters I have penned,

  across a floor awash with shattered glass and drink

  to roll before the barking mastiffs black as ink,

  whose jaws dispense a cataract of awful foam …

  a breath disperses all the boundaries of home.

  La Bête (Bottom)

  Reality being too prickly for my big personality,

  I found myself nonetheless chez Milady,

  as a great big grey-blue bird soaring to the ceiling

  cornice, trailing my wings through the shades of evening.

  I became, at the foot of the four-poster bed

  which hid her adorable jewellery, her golden braid,

  her physical masterworks, a great big bear

  with violet gums, fur grizzled with grief, my eyes on the pair

  of silver and crystal consoles. All became shadow

  and glowing aquarium. Come morning, I rushed out to go —

  brave dawn of June — braying on to the fields,

  brandishing my great big donkey grievance, till the well-heeled

  Sabine suburban housewives from beyond the railway track

  flew madly to throw themselves on my donkey-rough neck

  Lives (Vies)

  1

  O the enormous a
venues of the Holy Land,

  the terraces of the Temple! The desert sand!

  What has become of him, the Brahman who explained

  the Book of Proverbs to me as if preordained?

  And even the old women of that time and place,

  I see them still! And I remember azure space,

  the silver hours and sunlit rivers, my companion’s

  hand on my shoulder, as on the peppery plains

  we caressed each other. Thundering about my thought,

  a flight of scarlet pigeons. Exiled, I had wrought

  a stage on which to realize all the masterpieces

  of dramatic literature from West to East.

  I could show you untold riches. I could tell

  tales of treasures found by you. I’d know the sequel.

  My wisdom? Scorned as chaos. What’s my nothingness

  to the wonders that await you, and will leave you speechless?

  2

  I am an inventor such as never yet was seen;

  moreover, a musician of the Hippocrene

  who has discovered something like the clef of love.

  At present, as a country gentleman, I live

  off my meagre lands and modest piece of sky,

  trying to rejuvenate the memory

  of my beggar childhood, my apprenticeship,

  arriving in my clogs, and then the slip on slip

  of half a dozen widowhoods, the raucous nights

  when, sober-headed as I was, I could not rise

  to the occasion of my comrades’ capriccioso.

  Though I don’t regret my divine former ego:

  the sober air of this bleak country keeps me well

  supplied with scepticism. But since I’m compelled

  to say that scepticism doesn’t pay the bills,

  and I’m devoted to a newer set of ills,

  watch out! For very soon now I expect to be

  a lunatic of high and dangerous degree!

  3

  In a loft in which they locked me at the age

  of twelve, I came to know the world. I was a page

  in La Comédie Humaine. In a cellar I learned

  History. In a northern city, at a nocturne

  revel, the Old Masters’ mistresses were brought

  to me. In a gloomy Paris arcade I was taught

  Astronomy. And in a most superior abode

  surrounded by the entire Orient below,

  I worked prodigiously until my oeuvre was complete,

  then spent my time there in illustrious retreat.

  I’ve brewed my blood. Paid all my dues. I really do come

  from beyond the tomb. Commissions? That I’ve done.

  INTERLUDE

  Tale (Conte)

  A prince was not happy with himself because until then he had put all his energies into perfecting vulgar liberalities. He foresaw astounding revolutions of love, and suspected his wives could do better than complaisance ornamented by celestial luxury. He wished to see the truth, the hour of essential desire and satisfaction. Aberration of piety or not, that was what he wished for. He had a tolerable amount of worldly power at his disposal.

  All the women who had known him were put to death: what plunder in the Garden of Beauty! Under the sabre’s edge, they gave him their blessing. He did not order any new ones. Women reappeared.

  He put to death all who followed him on hunting or drinking expeditions. Everyone followed him.

  He entertained himself in slitting the throats of rare beasts. He set palaces in flames. He would pounce on his people and hack them to pieces. Still the hoi polloi, the golden roofs, the splendid animals remained.

  Can one find bliss through mass destruction, rejuvenation through cruelty? There was not so much as a murmur from the masses. No one ventured an opinion.

  One evening he was haughtily galloping. A Genie appeared, a being of ineffable, emphatic beauty. His countenance and bearing displayed the promise of a manifold and complex love! Nay, of inexpressible and unendurable felicity! It is probable that the Prince and the Genie annihilated each other in perfect health. How could they not help but die of it? So they died together.

  But the Prince passed away in his palace, at a normal age. The Prince was the Genie. The Genie was the Prince.

  Deep music falls short of our desire.

  ACT TWO

  Invisible Cities (Les Ponts)

  Skies a crystal grey. Bizarre design of bridges, some straight,

  some humpbacked, others looping down oblique and angulate,

  a design repeated in the other, lighted circuits

  of the grand canal, but all so long and delicate

  that the docks, overloaded with domes, are lowered

  and diminished. A few of the said bridges are still covered

  with hovels. Others support poles, frail parapets and tropes.

  Minor chords cross each other and fade away; ropes

  ascend from the embankments. You can make out a red coat,

  perhaps other costumes; musical instruments you may note.

  Are these popular tunes, snatches of seigneurial spree,

  fragments of public anthems? Wide as an arm of the sea,

  the water is grey and blue. A white ray

  falling from the outer sky annihilates this comedy.

  On the Road (Enfance)

  1

  Black-eyed idol, shocked with yellow hair, of no known clan

  or ancestry, yet nobler than fable, Mexican

  crossed with Flemish; her domain the arrogant azure

  and forty shades of greenery which court the shore

  called into being by the shipless waves which speak

  its place names of barbaric Slavic, Celtic, Greek.

  At the brink of the forest — dream flowers tingle, flash

  and flare — the girl with orange lips, her knees sashed

  by the glassy flood that gushes from the meadows,

  body bare but shimmering and clothed by flora, rainbow,

  sea and shadow. Ladies stroll on terraces

  adjacent to the sea. There are girls and giantesses,

  tall black women proud amid the mossy verdigris,

  jewels standing in the fat soil of the seaside groves

  and thawing flowerbeds. Young mums the images

  of big sisters with their eyes full of pilgrimages;

  sultanas, swanky princesses in haughty haute couture

  and little foreign girls, and girls in melancholic sweet amour.

  Quel ennui, the hours of murmuring, ‘Ma chérie,

  I know just how you feel … He will come round, you’ll see.’

  2

  That’s her, the little dead girl, behind the bed of roses.

  Mamma, passed away, passes down the steps. To the roses.

  Cousin’s carriage squeaks on the sand. The sun

  sets on little brother (he’s in India!) in the red carnation

  meadow. And the old men buried, for their part,

  bolt upright in the wallflower-covered rampart.

  A swarm of golden leaves surrounds the general’s house.

  You take the red road to the empty inn. We’re in the South.

  The chateau’s up for sale, the shutters hanging loose.

  The curate has the keys to the church: it’s no longer in use.

  Around the park the keepers’ cottages lie forlorn,

  the fences overgrown with rustling, sky-scraping thorn.

  In any case there’s nothing to be seen beyond the trees.

  The meadows climb to hamlets without anvil or cock.

  The sluice gate lies open. O Calvaries

  and windmills of the wilderness, the isles of haycock.

  3

  Magic flowers buzzed. Hill slopes rocked him to and fro.

  Fabulously elegant monsters performed a mambo.

  Clouds fattening and floating tier upon tier

  over the high seas gathered from an eternity of t
ears.

  4

  In the woods there is a bird. His song stops you. You blush.

  There is a clock that never strikes. You hear the hush.

  There is a pothole in which white things seethe around.

  There is a lake that goes up, and a steeple that goes down.

  There is a little carriage in the copse, abandoned

  or it’s running away down the road beribboned.