No More Learning

Oh who'll tell of the wrongs of Rhyme?

What mad Negro, or tone-deaf child,

Created this penny jewel, this crime,

That rings hollow, false under the file?

Music once more and forever!

Let your line be a thing so light,

It feels like a soul that soars in flight

To new skies and fresh lovers.

Let your line be the finest adventure

Afloat on the tense dawn wind

That goes wakening thyme and mint. . .

All the rest - is literature.

Jules Laforgue (1860-1887)

Jules Laforgue

'Jules Laforgue'
1885, Wikimedia Commons

Pierrots

Emerges, on a taut neck,

From a starched ruff idem

A beardless face, cold-creamed,

A beanpole: hydrocephalic.

The eyes are drowned in opium

In universal licence

The clownish mouth bewitched

A singular geranium.

A mouth, now bottomless pit

Glacially screeching laughter,

Now a transcendental opening,

Vain smile of La Gioconda.

Planting their floury cones

On a black silk cut-throat's scarf,

They'll make their crow's-feet laugh

And wrinkle their trefoil noses.

For gem-stoned rings, on hand,

They've Egyptian scarabs,

In well-cut buttonholes,

Dandelions from the wasteland.

They go, eating the azure,

Sometimes vegetables too,

Hard-boiled eggs, and mandarins,

And rice as white as their costume.

They're of the Pallid sect,

They've nothing to do with God at all.
And whistle: All's for the best

In this best of Carnivals! '

Pierrot's Speech

A lunar reveller simply

Making circles in ponds,

I've no designs beyond

Becoming legendary.

Gathering up with defiance

My pale-mandarin's sleeves

I puff out my mouth - and breathe

Gentle Christian advice.

Ah, yes, to become legendary, too,

On the brink of a charlatan age!

But where are last year's Moons?

And why can't God be re-made?

Pierrot's Melancholy

On the first day, I drink their bored eyes complete. . .

And I would kiss their feet

To death. Oh, if they'd deign

To take my heart, blood-stained!

Then we talk. . . - it becomes Tenderness,

And finally I offer them friendliness.

Out of tenderness, I offer myself, as brother, guide;

They believe I'm shy,

Wink a soft eye of course:

'One word and I'm yours!