No More Learning

A glutton, full of what he could win,

He'd embrace me - with him I've lain.

What's he left me? Shame and sin.

Now he's dead, these thirty years:

And I live on, old, and grey.

When I think of those times, with tears,

What I was, what I am today,

View myself naked: turn at bay,

Seeing what I am no longer,

Poor, dry, meagre, worn away,

I almost forget myself in anger.

Where's my smooth brow gone:

My arching lashes, yellow hair,

Wide-eyed glances, pretty ones,

That took in the cleverest there:

Nose not too big or small: a pair

Of delicate little ears, the chin

Dimpled: a face oval and fair,

Lovely lips with crimson skin?

The fine slender shoulder-blades:

The long arms, with tapering hands:

My small breasts: the hips well made

Full and firm, and sweetly planned,

All Love's tournaments to withstand:

The broad flanks: the nest of hair,

With plump thighs firmly spanned,

Inside its little garden there?

Now wrinkled forehead, hair gone grey:

Sparse eyelashes: eyes so dim,

That laughed and flashed once every way,

And reeled their roaming victims in:

Nose bent from beauty, ears thin,

Hanging down like moss, a face,

Pallid, dead and bleak, the chin

Furrowed, a skinny-lipped disgrace.

This is the end of human beauty:

Shrivelled arms, hands warped like feet:

The shoulders hunched up utterly:

Breasts. . . . what? In full retreat,

Same with the hips, as with the teats:

Little nest, hah! See the thighs,

Not thighs, thighbones, poor man's meat,

Blotched like sausages, and dried.
She Who Was the Helmet-Maker's Beautiful Wife

'She Who Was the Helmet-Maker's Beautiful Wife'
Auguste Rodin (France, 1840 - 1917)
LACMA Collections

That's how the bon temps we regret

Among us, poor old idiots,

Squatting on our haunches, set

All in a heap like woollen lots

Round a hemp fire men forgot,

Soon kindled, and soon dust,

Once so lovely, that cocotte. . .

So it goes for all of us.

Le Testament: Ballade: 'Item: Donne A Ma Povre Mere'

Item

This I give to my poor mother

As a prayer now, to our Mistress

- She who bore bitter pain for me,

God knows, and also much sadness -

I've no other castle or fortress,

That my body and soul can summon,

When I'm faced with life's distress,

Nor has my mother, poor woman:

Ballade

'Lady of Heaven, earthly queen,

Empress of the infernal regions,

Receive me, a humble Christian,

To live among the chosen ones,

Though I'm worth less than anyone.

Your grace, my Lady and Mistress

Is greater than my sinfulness,

Grace without which, I tell no lie,

None deserve their blessedness.

In this faith let me live and die.

Say to your Son that I am His.

Through Him all my sins are lost:

Forgive me, as Mary Egypt was,

Or, so they say, Theophilus,

Who by your grace was still blameless,

Though he vowed the Devil a guest.

Protect me always from like excess,

Virgin, who bore, without a cry,

Christ whom we celebrate at Mass.

In this faith let me live and die.

I am a woman, poor and old,

I can neither read nor spell.

At Mass in church, here, I behold,

A painted Heaven, with harps: a Hell,

Where the damned are boiled, as well.

One gives me joy: one strikes me cold,

Grant me the joy, Great Goddess,

On whom all sinners must rely,

Fill me with faith and no slackness.

In this faith let me live and die.

V irgin, you bore, O High Princess,

I ssue, whose kingdom is endless,

L ord, who took on a littleness

L ike ours: to save us left the sky,

O ffering his lovely youth to death.