(A few days ago I remembered that in my grandparents' apartment, near the U of M & the Mississippi River, there was to be seen not only Grandpa's big brass shell ("the last shell fired in the Great War," he always said), & not only his rack of ever-present pipes & tobacco fumes, but also an old print, hanging over the dinner table - a formal 18th-century dance, with Lafayette twirling on his toes, & George Washington & friends off to one side, looking on.)
AFTER APOLLINAIRE
That pudgy Parisian poet-vet
tattooed all over with scars –
a Queequeg of the War
to End All Wars (but not just yet) –
he of the blundered parentage (the
Pope was perhaps his father?)
– all that Roman bother –
a fenced-in pyramidical sage
gypsoid tumbleweed, fuming
over his Dallas Lorelei
across the Rhine (goodbye,
good luck)... O trench-spit spuming
rural rose! & the grapevine murmurs
Marne, Loire... the soil
of France – the ceaseless toil
of dew, pour l’amour de Dieu (showers
of tipsy fireflies in the wind-blown
hair of remote by-ways, so
gently merveilleuse)...
Adroit the boatman, who hath sewn
these sails – hath bent these anchored ribs
into prow, & figure-
head (one pierced oreille);
subtle the fisherman (Gennesareth
swab) who scanned these Galilean farms
with an ear to the waves.
Après l’Armistice, he saves
a little pipesmoke... (ashen charms).
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