Edward VI
In hushed Westminster Abbey’s gloomy vaults,
reposed at the feet of his illustrious ancestors,
Edward the Sixth, a sixteen-year-old king,
sleeps his eternal marble sleep, long since forgotten.
He was a sober, sad, kindly youth
who in his cold palace lived with books,
with bishops and stern sages for companions,
whose death became his only history.
Since he had no love affairs, nor made war,
on his marble tomb have not been carved
the triumphal blazons left him by his forefathers,
but only these flowers for his royal crest:
the Galatian lily and the Tudor rose.
Fragrant his tomb, as though these flowers were real.
`
*
Aquarelle
On the mole, sluggish in the summer’s heat,
scalding mists bob on the burning sand,
and its small houses, stark and whitewashed,
make white brush strokes on the sea.
Gold-green waters, translucent, becalmed,
reveal silver pebbles, snake-twisted seaweed,
rusting anchors and mauve shadows
that moored caiques cast around them.
Nothing moves. A fisherman angling on the mole
stretches his hands idly and yawns,
then sprawls on the stones and has a kip.
Only a ferocious, black-haired dog
squats by the stern of a large caique
and squints at the dead strand drowsily.
`
*
Fontaine de Medicis*
I know a secluded corner in a large park
where even loving couples never dare go,
for darksome waters lie there chockablock with rotted leaves,
and deep-green shadows droop in their acqueous veils.
There stand stone benches, ivy-trellised,
and naked statues, moss-clad,
and a deadly quiet but for the murmurous
lamentation of mysterious waters that goes on and on.
There I’ve always seen unknown and sallow women
as though without age, with no life in their eyes,
spread on their knees their eternal embroideries,
and pallid youths holding books in their hands:
yet those never embroidered and these never read,
but lost in thought gazed on the dark, stagnant waters.
*In the Luxembourg Gardens, Paris.
`
*
I Shall Die One Day on a Mournful Autumn Afternoon
I shall die one day on a mournful autumn afternoon
in my cold room, all alone as I’ve always lived;
in my last anguish I shall hear the rain
and the familiar noises the street scatters.
I shall die one day on a mournful autumn afternoon
among furniture not mine, the place littered with books;
the police shall find me in bed
and bury me a man who had no history.
Of my friends, with whom now and then I played cards,
someone will simply ask, “Has anyone seen
Ouranis? He hasn’t been around for days.”
Another, playing, will answer, “But he died!”
They’ll stop for a moment, cards in hand,
shake their heads slowly, sorrowfully, and say,
“What is man! Only yesterday he was still living!”
And then resume their playing speechless.
Some fellow journalist will write in the “small notices”
that “Ouranis died abroad untimely,
a young man well known amid our set, whose first book
of poems showed much promise.”
And this will be my life’s last epitaph.
Only my aged parents will weep back home,
hold a memorial service with far too many priests,
with all my friends attending, even my foes.
I shall die one day on a mournful autumn afternoon
in a strange room, in bustling Paris,
and some “Kate,” thinking I’ve jilted her for another,
will write to curse me – but I’ll be dead….
`
*
Park in Autumn
How mournful seems the park in the rain,
its wan flowers wounded and tilting,
its statues washed down as round each base
rot in heaps withered leaves brought by the wind….
In the grim, ashen horizon
its passageways, now deserted, endless and cold,
with their tall trees stripped to the bone
as though advancing to the mute kingdom of the dead.
By the ponds, the ancient urns
cast no reflections as in summertime
when the white doves fluttered down to drink.
Only the fountain’s musical dirge
in the drizzle and the chill
in vain is scattered through the destitute, harrowing day.
