The Afternoon Of A Faun
These nymphs, how I want them to last …
It was so vivid,
carnal yet weightless, that it tumbles now through the air
drowsy with sleep soft as a girl’s down.
Did I make love to a dream?
My doubt, clustered from a night long-passed, gathered
into a bundle of delicate twigs, which, appearing to stand for the
real woods itself, proves, alas! that I was completely alone when,
believing I had succeeded, I offered a stained ideal of roses by way of
triumph …
Let me concentrate …
on whether the females I so closely gloss
resemble the wished-for desires of my fantastic senses!
Faun, the illusion slips from her cold blue eyes,
but the other, the one all overcome with panting, would you say she is no different than the daybreak warming your fleece?
Not at all! lying still in a worn-out swoon,
breathless with heat, the morning light would chill her if she struggles;
no other moist murmur than that which spills from my flute
in a grove showered with consent: and the only breeze
beyond the twin tips leads one to breathe out, just before
scattering the sound in arid rain,
and at the horizon’s line, unmarked, unrippled,
the visible, serene, and artificial act
of breathing in, which restores the sky.
On the banks of a calm Sicilian marshland,
where my envy of the sun let vanity wreak havoc,
having come to an agreement beneath the spark-speckled flowers, SPEAK ON:
“That here I broke the hollow reeds tamed
by skill; when, on the dull gold of far-off
meadows, with vineyards well-sluiced by fountains,
an animal whiteness softly undulant in its rest:
and in the slow prelude where the pipes came to life,
a flight of startled swans, or no! … rather the flight of naiads
as they saved themselves, plunging … “
inert, burned up in the wild hour
without noticing by what magic they had scampered
away, too much desirable maidenhead yearned for by the one searching:
thus I roused myself to the fervor’s opening act,
erect and alone, beneath a tide of timeless light,
lilies! and one of you more than enough to be clever.
Other than this sweet nothing ravished from their lips
(the kiss), reassuring the lowest of the treacherous low,
my breast, clear of evidence, showed a mysterious
bite-mark, set there by some regal mouth;
but wait! hold for a moment … that something hidden and secret should select
as confidante, the enormous, swollen-lipped bulrush which nestles
cheek to azure, which, turning to itself that trembled cheek,
dreams, by means of a long solo, that we have played a deception
on the surrounding beauties,
confusing its music with our own little song;
and doing such a thing so blatantly that love loosened
and grew faint with a common image, of backside rearing
above smooth hips, image I follow with eyelids shut,
the tune rounding its complacent, monotonous line.
Try again, hollow reed, flight-starter, o wicked
Syrinx, try to blossom again beside the lakes where you wait for me!
For my part, proud of my insinuating sounds, I’ll
chatter at length of goddesses; with idolatrous pantomime
I’ll unshade them with each strap I strip off.
And so, when I’ve sucked the light from the grapes,
banishing my regret at the failure of my knee-parting ploy,
I’ll remain the laughing one, raising to the summer sun
the juiceless cluster and, blowing into their gleaming skins,
greedy and drunk, I’ll pass the day by gazing idly through them.
o nymphs, let us re-engorge still more memories.
“My eye, roughly penetrating the reeds, darted towards
each divine throat, drowning its heat in the waves
with a cry of rage shot to the forest canopy;
and that splendid shower of hair, thrashing and vanishing
in the sparkle and the shudder, like so many jewels!
I raced towards them: and found, entwined at my feet
(nearly spending at the appetizing danger of there being two of them,
such leisure I would need!)
the sleepers lightly wrapped in each other’s arms;
I caught them up together, holding them still enlaced,
and hurried to this thicket, hedged round with playful shadows.
As roses, emptying out their perfume to the sun,
so was our daylight lovemaking.”
How I adore you, the fury of virgins, oh shy, fierce pleasure,
divine weight of nakedness made slippery
so as to escape my fire-drinking lips, spasm a lightning flash
in that secret shock of flesh:
from the feet of the angrier one to the other’s timid heart,
who abandons innocence in an instant, damp with
hysterical tears and another happier wetness.
“My crime was to have separated, in my joy at
having overcome those cunning inhibitions, the love-
tousled kisses which the gods had kept so deeply
blended: thus, as I thrust my lustful laughter
into the happy responses of the one (securing, with
a single finger, the smaller one, so naïve she couldn’t even blush,
hoping that with such a light touch a spark from her sister
as she caught fire, might singe her as well)
then from out of my arms, distracted as I was by the pleasure
of my approaching tremors,
my prey, in all-consuming ingratitude, escaped,
caring not at all for the moans which staggered me, mid-sob.”
No matter! other nymphs will engulf me cheerfully,
twining their tresses on my horns;
my passion knows this much: how, when purple, almost ripe,
each pomegranate bursts amid a swarm of bees;
and our blood, loving whatever attracts it,
runs freely to quench desire’s eternal swarm.
At the hour when these woods are stained
with the color of gold and ashes,
the faded leaves exult and celebrate:
Aetna! it was to you that Venus first came,
to mark your lava with her still-virgin footprints,
when sad sleep’s troubled breath blew out the flame.
I’ll possess the queen!
O certain punishment …
So no … and now the soul, filled with empty words and the body’s
heaviness at last gives in to the proud silence of afternoon.
Enough … time to sleep in blasphemous forgetfulness.
To stretch out on the thirsty sand as I do that which I love,
opening my mouth to the wine-dripping stars.
Farewell, you two,
I’m slipping into the shadow you’ve become.
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The Clown, Refined
Eyes: laked with drunk desire to be reborn
as something other than a player whose gestures evoke,
like pen strokes, the common soot of oil lamps,
I’ve clawed from the canvas wall a window.
With my leg and limpid arms, disloyal swimmer,
multiple breaststrokes to renounce Hamlet’s
malice, it was as if I’d created, within the surf,
a thousand tombs to take me, virgin.
Little gold cymbals, beaming from fidgeting wrists,
and suddenly the sun washing the nudity
to a clean evaporation off my pearled chill,
it was the skin’s rancid night when you passed over me,
ignorant ingrate! not knowing my coronation was this very
make-up, drowned in treacherous glaciers.
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Sea Breeze
The flesh is sad, and I’ve read every last book.
Run away! Far away! I imagine the birds, drunk
at being caught between strange spray and skies.
Nothing, not even the old gardens reflected in those eyes
can keep hold of the heart drenched by the sea.
O nights … not even the desert’s emptiness of my lamp
on the unmarked paper, its whiteness its protector,
nor the young woman nursing her baby.
I’ll go away! Steamer, balancing your masts,
raise your anchor for a new and exotic wild.
Ennui, made desolate with cruelest hopes,
believes once more in a handkerchief’s ultimate goodbye.
And perhaps the masts, flirting with storms,
will provoke the wind to blow them into shipwreck,
lost, without masts, without masts or life-giving isles …
Even so, my heart listens to the sailors’ song.
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The flame’s-flight of hair …
The flame’s-flight of hair, combed
to the utter occident of desires,
settles (I’d say ‘dies a diadem’s death’)
crowning the forehead’s former hearth
but without gold’s resuscitation of this cloud,
fire smolders, always within,
the first and only one never-ending
in the jewel of the exact, laughing eye.
A vulnerable hero’s nakedness slanders
that motionlessness, neither star nor finger-flash,
nothing other than simplifying woman with glory,
achieved in the first blare of lightning, this mission
of dousing with fertile rubies the doubt she skins alive,
worn like an ecstatic guardian torch.
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This virgin, lively, lovely day …
This virgin, lively, lovely day
will it shear for us, with a wild wing’s tearing,
the icebound lake haunted under frost,
the clear forgotten glacier of un-flown flights.
A once-upon-a-time swan recalls that it itself,
magnificent in hopelessness, yielded,
failed to sing the realm’s name where one might live,
when boredom was lucid with sterile winter.
Its throat shivers off this white agony,
denying the very space which inflicts it,
but knows its plumage is caught fast in the earth.
Ghost, whose unsoiled brilliance masks the place,
paralyzed in a dream as cold as contempt,
clothing the swan in impotent exile.
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The beautiful suicide fled in victory …
The beautiful suicide fled in victory
branded with glory, foaming blood, gold and tempest!
O laugh! if down below, purple’s affectation
ennobles nothing but my missing tomb.
What! of all that brilliance no small shred
left lingering, made midnight with celebratory darkness,
excepting a head’s presumptuous riches,
spilling groomed and carefree beyond the torchlight.
The pleasure is yours, as always! And yours, yes,
only that which you keep from the vanished sky,
a bit of juvenile triumph in the sober arrangement
of your hair on the pillows,
like the helmet of a little warrior princess, …
and catching you requires a net of falling roses.
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Holding high her onyx-fine fingernails …
Holding high her onyx-fine fingernails in offering,
midnight’s Anguish partners a lamp-bearer,
the many dreams burned by the Phoenix
and no reverent ashtray to catch them.
On the sideboards, in the empty salon: no ptyx,
abolished trinket of sonorous inanity,
(for the Master is gone to draw up tears from the Styx
with the only vessel which Nothingness recognizes)
But near the crossing into the featureless north,
a golden fretting, perhaps mere decoration,
of unicorns kicking fiery hooves against a sprite.
And she, disrobed and laid in the mirror,
even as, in amnesia’s enclosed frame, the sparklings
fix an instance of sevens.
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The Tomb Of Charles Baudelaire
The buried temple vomits via the sewer’s
sepulchral mouth, a slop of mud and rubies,
abominable as an Anubis idol,
muzzle inflamed in a savage howling.
The freshly-exhaled gas twists the gangster wick,
wipes off the familiar insults it’s received,
casts an agitated light over an undying pubic relic,
the parade of insomniacs beneath the street lamps.
What sapless foliage in the cities’ unconsecrated
night could bless as well as this the resting place
beside Baudelaire’s self-conscious marble.
The veil which barely hides it in its trembling,
she is his Shade, his guardian poison,
to be forever breathed, forever lethal.
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Introducing myself into your story …
Introducing myself into your story
as a hero much alarmed,
having grazed his bare heel
on some lawn, in some place
where glaciers risk assassination …
I do not know the innocent sin
wherein you could not keep from laughing,
hilariously exclaiming victory.
If I am not overjoyed, say so,
thunder and rubies axle-bound,
seeing the air fire-shot with holes,
with kingdoms scattered
the wheel dying in the purple
of my sole sunset chariot.
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Text For Des Esseintes
Hyperbole! you don’t know how
to rise up, triumphant, from
my memory, this day’s spell
in an iron-bound book:
patience is my craft,
for I inlay, scientifically –
the heart’s prayer and
atlas, botanist’s leaves and rituals.
Out sightseeing, we gaze
(don’t deny you were there)
over the landscape’s delights
comparing them, my sister, with your own.
But Authority stumbled
when, unprovoked, our
doubled subconscious found itself
possessed, the afternoon insinuating
the whereabouts of the richly-
irised garden (it exists?
it doesn’t exist?) are unmentioned
by summer’s gold trumpet.
Yes, in an island air charged
with sights rather than visions
the flowers fill and thrust
without our mentioning them.
By degrees, and immense, each
one standing isolated
in its own halo of light,
parentheses in the garden.
A glory long desired,
My intimate notions rejoicing to see
the family of irises
rising to their new task.
But the expression of the wise
and gentle sister resolves merely
to a smile, and divining what’s meant
I resume my previous pose.
Oh! aware of litigation’s spirit,
in the hour when we cease speaking,
that the stalks of monstrous lilies
overwhelm us with size
and yet, despite the weeping riverbank
whose never-ending monotone pretends
the hour of fullness has arrived,
imagine my immediate astonishment
to hear heaven and earth
testify without a pause behind me,
even as a new wave curls by,
that the island never was.
The child denies such ecstasy,
and schooled by her outings
blurts the word: Anastase!
Its destiny an eternity scrolled
before a tomb, whereabouts
unknown, to mock its own origin,
daughter of beauty! (now
hidden by the overgrown flower).