LETTERS TO MADELEINE: TENDER AS MEMORY by GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE

JEFF HARRISON Engages

Letters To Madeleine: Tender As Memory by Guillaume Apollinaire, Edited by Lawrence Campa, Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith
(Seagull Books, London, 2010)

[each line below is an excerpt from Apollinaire's Letters To Madeleine]

There is an inkwell
tender as
a panther's laugh

the first inkwell
to be
a secret Bacchante

What nerve!
It is Venus herself fastened upon her prey

a silver wound in the sun
the towns one by one become keys

Hold fast,
delightfully dark
Bavarian belt buckle

melancholy is
the fool's parsley
sardonic
sardonic

years and years
pale epigones of
rabbits' noses
epigones
pale as
a double bridge of snow

years and years
brandished like sabres
like snails' eyes
made from the rays of the sun

And what a sun the errant mouth

under the veil of Allegory
the life of Coleridge
shakes me as Samson shook
I who live in the forest
in the shadows of the forest

witches
clack clack
so-and-so
tack-tack-tacking

mice, I mean -- not witches

There is an inkwell
upright as
the spells of the Etruscans

The second inkwell
to be
a secret Bacchante

What nerve!
Silent? I forbid it!

hurrah for Madeleine
hurrah
hurrah

And here she is on the balcony
toppling dwarf suns
hurrah

pip-pop-boom
oh my Poppaea
snuggled between
a mason and a woodcutter

a pair of doves
in disguise
names but I don't know them

honey and light
perhaps

Madeleine?
Is she smiling? Dreaming?
The bird Madeleine
falling back down to
rotten pears

pale epigones of
sabre and revolver
cherry and lilac

for two pins
a cloud of flies
would block out the sun

for
Rimbaud's louis d'or
I'll try to
poetic more

for Madeleine
I mean --
for Madeleine

****

Jeff Harrison reviewed books for the past eleven issues of Galatea Resurrects. He has publications from Writers Forum, MAG Press, Persistencia Press, White Sky Books, and Furniture Press. He has e-books from Blazevox, xPress(ed), and Argotist Ebooks. His poetry has appeared in An Introduction to the Prose Poem (Firewheel Editions), The Hay(na)ku Anthology Vol. II (Meritage Press and xPress(ed)), The Chained Hay(na)ku Project (Meritage Press and xPress(ed)), Sentence: a Journal of Prose Poetics, Xerography, Moria, NOON: journal of the short poem, Dusie, MiPOesias, EOAGH, EXPLORINGfictions, and elsewhere. You can read his poetry here and here.  You are welcome to visit Antic View.