This poem is taken from PN Review 245, Volume 45 Number 3, January - February 2019.

After Ronsard

Jonathan Catherall
I.I
Ce premier jour de May, Helene, je vous jure


                                      .I
It’s International Workers Day, i.e.
your sense of solidarity means you’re unlikely
to fall for anyone invoking eternal nature,
or the way a vine wraps itself round a young elm,
or vegetable love, however biodynamic –
or who goes about in cloth and canvas, pollinating
the world with his green promises. Trust me, I’m not
one of those, and won’t, I swear, by no gods
& no masters, on my tattered copy of Kapital,
be found doing elsewhat elsewhere with elsewho.
Free love being merely the melting into air,
the laxity in which no revolution sprouts,
a snare of ideology, while the committee
has allotted me and you to leaflet together.
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