To the Poet on the Matter of Flowers.(Poem)(Critical Essay)

 
TO THE POET ON THE 
MATTER OF FLOWERS 
 
Translated from French by Jeremy Harding 
For M. Theodore de Banville 
 
   I. 
 
   And so to Lilies! Pessaries of ecstasy, 
   Forever tending to an azure black 
   Where topaz seas vibrate, serving 
   Their purposes in your night! 
 
   This is the age of tapioca. 
   The vegetation is no longer work-shy. 
   The lily soaks up blue antipathies 
   From your religious prose. 
 
   --Kerdrel's monarchist Fleur de Lys, 
   The Sonnet of 1830, 
   The lily, the pink, and the amaranth, 
   Conferred upon the Bard. 
 
   Lilies! Lilies! Not that one finds them, 
   Except in your verse, where 
   Their white heads stir like the sleeves 
   Of Fallen Women treading softly. 
 
   Always, Dear Master, when you take a bath, 
   That shirt of yours with yellow armpits 
   Billows in the morning breeze 
   Above the gross forget-me-nots. 
 
   Love can only carry lilacs-quite 
   Ludicrous--down your customs ramp. 
   And woodland violets, 
   Sugary hawkings of blackened larvae. 
 
   II. 
 
   Poets, what would you say 
   To Roses--blown roses, 
   Red on laurel stems, inflated 
   By quires of octosyllables! 
 
   BANVILLE snows his roses down 
   In blood-flecked eddies: 
   A jab in the rough, untutored eye 
   With all its dim misreadings. 
 
   In your fields and forests, 
   You tranquilized photographers, 
   The Flora is about as various 
   As a pile of wine-corks! 
 
   The great French vegetable, 
   Ill-natured, shriveled and absurd! 
   Skimmed by the bellies of basset hounds 
   Waddling through the uneventful dusk! 
 
   Always, after frightful drawings 
   Of a blue lotus or a sunflower 
   Come the pink prints, on pious themes 
   For the young girls' First Communion! 
 
   Odes to the Asoka tree work well 
   As verses shaped like a courtesan's …