Nine Poems after Verlaine

November Dusk

Autumn and the departing sun, and I am wild
with joy! Corpse hues drenched in blood,
a five-alarm sky, death possessing a world of mud,
torpid ponds, and man the sick child!

This is, poet, your hour and your season, all
illusions gone, your heart laid bare,
that tender heart which the rats’ feet of passion tear,
your looking-glass, your festival!

Let academics, dupes, and noted authors fawn
over the springtime and the dawn,
those two foxy virgins even costlier than

their frocks; I choose you, autumn, prefer your dark grace
to any little darling’s face,
you my implacable and strange-eyed courtesan.


Golden Verses
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