Classic and Contemporary Poetry
WINDOWS (VERSION A), by STEPHANE MALLARME Poem Explanation Poet's Biography First Line: Disgusted with the dreary hospital, and the rank fumes Last Line: -even at the risk of falling in eternity? Subject(s): Self-hate | ||||||||
Disgusted with the dreary hospital, and the rank fumes Rising with the banal whiteness of the curtains Toward the great crucifix tired of the bare wall, The man destined for death slyly straightens his old spine, Shuffles, less to warm his rotting body Than to watch the sun on the stones, to press His ashen gaunt and skeletal face To the panes which a clear beautiful ray attempts to tinge, And his mouth, feverish and greedy for the azure, As when young, he breathed his prize, A virginal cheek! soils With a long bitter kiss the warm golden panes. Drunk, forgetting the horror of the holy oil, The herb teas, the clock and the inflicted bed, The cough, he lives again; and when twilight bleeds on the tiles, His eye on the horizon gorged with light, Sees golden ships, fine as swans, On a scented river of purple, sleepily Rocking the rich faun flash of their lines In a great calm charged with memory! In this way, disgusted with the blunt-souled man Who wallows in contentment, where only his appetites Devour him, and who insists on fetching this filth To present to his wife nursing her children, I flee and I cling to all those windows From where one turns one's back on life, and hallowed, In their glass, washed by eternal dews, Gilded by the chaste morning of the Infinite I see myself and I brag I am an angel! and I die, and I long -Let the glass be art, let it be mysticism- To be reborn, wearing my dream as a crown, In a past heaven where Beauty flourished! But, alas! Here-below is master; its curse Sickens me at times even in this safe shelter, And the foul vomit of Stupidity Makes me stop up my nose in face of the azure. Is there a way for Me who knows bitterness, To shatter the crystal insulted by the monster And to escape with my two featherless wings -Even at the risk of falling in eternity? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SELF-PORTRAIT AT TWENTY by GREGORY ORR TEARING UP MY MOTHER'S LETTERS by DIANE WAKOSKI DARK DAUGHTER by NICOLE BLACKMAN WAR OF POVERTY by JONAS L. GOLDSTEIN JIGOKU: ON THE GLAMOUR OF SELF-HATE by GARRETT KAORU HONGO SELF-HATRED OF DON L. LEE by HAKI R. MADHUBUTI A FRAGMENT by STEPHANE MALLARME A THROW OF THE DICE NEVER WILL ABOLISH CHANCE by STEPHANE MALLARME |
|