"Quand C'est Minuit dans le Siècle"

MAURICE ENGLISH

MAURICE ENGLISH

REASONS FOR LOVE

Who rinsed the ashes from my mouth and took

Out of my nervous hand the nervous knife?

Took from my sorrow its predestined look?

I love you for my love and for my life.

Who brought me a small seascape in her eyes

Firm footing under wave, calm coves above?

In a world that's veined and vicious with surprise

I love you for your life and for your love.

THE CHORUS

When the gaslights went out, and Edison

Scattered his little lamps, I stepped outside

And, callow, looked down Harvard Street and heard

A bell of voices in the poplar trees

And in the trash-uplifting summer wind.

They led me to the Lake, into a train,

Through the dogmatic lessons, to New York,

Beside a drunken girl in Bleecker Street,

Across the fishing ocean, to a quai

Where ancient whores were sitting and I shared

The autumn sickness of our France. They drew

My feet across the cratered face of Spain

And cast me with the childish Portuguese.

Here was no home. I fled, and fevered back

To that salt city where the prairies thrust

Stubbed thumbs of stone into the falling sky.

Structure

28 lines · 8 stanzas