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Aquarium

Chapter 28: Bal Saturnien
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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.

Bal Saturnien

I  WATCHED the dancers as they twirled
Around the candelabra’d room,
And ladies, diamonded, pearled,
Danced to the big brass jazz-band’s boom.
Rustles of skirts, perfumes that pass,
Faces aglow and eyes that beam;
Floors lucid as a looking-glass,
Lips glossy, puffed with crimson cream.
And I am sad, I know not why
With this illusive merriment;
Candles that flicker out and die,
Lilies that wither—youth that’s spent.