Poems on Champs Elysees

2012 Joseph Markenstein

An apology of my two selections is a good deed, I believe. The first is from Victor Hugo in a work titled after its first line: A Quoi Bon Entendre. It translates as from Latin: To What Good, Listen? The shall we before Listen is inferred in Latin and also French; a Gaullist mix with Latin. A QUOI BON ENTENDRE What good is listening To birds of the woods? The bird more shimmering Chants under hoods. That God show or vowel The ther of skies! More a pure cowl Brilliant in His Eyes. What April renewal Of gardened flower! Flower more naval Springing his tower. This Bird of Fire doG star of the Dove. This flower of Sire This funny thing called Love. The birds of woods (note the plural of birds) are those of plain nature and the Bird (note singular on Bird) is the idyllic for from all generic birds and it has a monkish hood, for it is on the field of dreams, that is the well of souls, that is Eden. The second verse here asks, even becks, God to tear the veil and reveal the ther (here spelled with the diphthong to denote the vapor used as anesthesia) of skies. The cowl is a wise hood where the word originates from and this Bird of all birds shines brilliant in Gods eyes as the most perfect one. Victor is hoping that this Godly vision will bring peace to his and his neighbors souls. In verse three, the mystery is heavens body (in the incorporate sense of unified parts); which is both a human body and at the same time the period known as the month of April when it is akin to rain. This may seem like a difficult paradox to think about something being a flesh body and also a period of time or season. Through the naval, Gods tour de force comes as the Chi from the centre, that of renewal. Verse four reveals Victors rudimentary belief in the Holy Spirit. I have felt this at least in translating his work here. It seems as though Victor were a side-show cast away from the mainstream Church, while still holding the core belief. My choice of wording

with doG star is obvious enough (God) and it has also connection with Sirius which is the star of summer that starts rising at night and by mid-summer rises in the broad daylight. The flower of Sire is the engendration or begottenment of Jesus the son of the Father who is One God. And that is a funny thing about Love. (1 John ?:? God is Love) Mine other example of Elysees with the French Poets is Sully Prudhomme who wrote against the pollutions of his time during the sweat-shop days of the industrial revolution; when coal dust was a daily environmental problem. It is called The Revolt of Roses THE REVOLT OF ROSES The Rose said one day in tears: I am ennuie! Mine high times are fini. Men have made the air impure, This belch of cities disrobes me of pleasure And the cash cows brow beat me with acrid odor of an enemy. More clear vistas are in free air, in The Open Field, By all the walls, by all the stones and cleft of cliff! By all dark seams would water sift, Tumultuous and swift, a people reeled. Ah! Theyve lengthened the day where they Lord the Loral. Inspired to Don glad rags in big top Glad Bags Where the ends open to more sad rags Mine assurance is in sublime contours of an hot-house floral! I help my friend to vanquish; it buys him twenty years Pleasure with pain from a kiss without prayer, The friendly confine to rights of preying, To flower my pedals, to the travail of Sears. Im no longer in balance should luxury lure, I dont crown the more their heads at banquets; All the same fits at funerals, such much of Bankettes Are scuttled by hands who to the midst of them concur[e]! Ontology to Be blasted, brutal or dissolved I reign without fame like a curette. Finer art trades me, vile love of which is profligate, They cultivate me with fervor, while honoring me without resolve! My choice of the word curette is from the surgical instrument used in clearing tissue away in biopsies; it plays on the word curate for a church. For the most part this poem should self explanatory in its railing on industrialism and pollution. It stands to reason that if nature does revolt, it shall seem like unto the apocalypse.

Heaven does not have to wait till the bitter end to come. If we as people will accept a more humble Cross of living in peace rather than creating Crosses devised too heavy for anyone to bear by War, Pestilence or Famine; we will achieve the heaven Hugo and Prudhomme were hoping for under the guise of a wish! I wish you all a pleasant journey! Joe Markenstein