Aquarium

Chapter 24: Escape

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About This Book

A sequence of vivid lyric poems juxtaposes urban modernity and sensual escapism, shifting between images of aquaria, industrial streets, cathedrals, cabarets and cultivated gardens. Rich sensory detail and decadent diction evoke crowded factories, neon-lit cafés, and intimate interiors while poems alternate social satire, melancholic reverie and pastoral relief. Several pieces use theatrical vignettes and musical rhythms to render characters and scenes indirectly, while others address sacred space, memory and longing through ornate imagery. The book’s structure groups shorter, imagistic poems into two parts that balance urban manners with curving, often erotic or elegiac, meditations.

Escape

(Rêvons: c’est l’heure—Verlaine)

WE’LL build us stairs of filmy clouds

And mount until the air is clear,

Above this greasy atmosphere

Of callous, artificial crowds.

Away from fœtid cities’ feet

Where, on the asphalt, taxis skate

Like sombre souls who percolate

Through Limbo’s crumbling lazaret.

Away from cities’ clinging noise

And as we are in full ascent

I’ll know the gamut of content

In looking at your perfect poise.

No trees shall pry with envied lust

On too mature a happiness

When I shall taste your lips’ caress,

Unmindful that I sprang from dust.

Courageously, with silent tears

We’ll meet the chaos of the dawn

And silently our hearts shall mourn,

As at an exodus of years.