Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO FRANCIS JAMMES, by CHARLES GUERIN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO FRANCIS JAMMES, by                    
First Line: O jammes, your house is like your countenance
Last Line: To mark the day I crossed your threshold, virgil's child.
Subject(s): Jammes, Francis (1868-1938)


O Jammes, your house is like your countenance.
A beard of ivy creeps up, a pine gives shade,
Eternally young and hardy as your heart
In spite of wind and winters and of grief.
The low wall of your courtyard is gilded with moss,
The house has but one story, and the grass grows
In the garden around the well and the laurel tree.
When I heard your gate shrill like a dying bird
A sudden faintness fell upon my soul.
I was a long time on my way to you,
O Jammes, and I found you just as I had dreamed.
I saw your playful dogs along the street,
And under your pied hat of black and white
Your frank eyes smiling out at me in sorrow.
Your pensive window opens on the horizon;
Here are your pipes, and your bookcase that reflects
The countryside amidst the volumes of verse.

Friend, since they are born, books will grow old,
Where we have wept still other men will smile:
But may neither of us, in spite of age, forget
The day our hands were firmly clasped in greeting.
Sweet to recall as an Indian Summer day;
We heard the tomtits singing in the hedge,
The bells murmured, carriages passed by. ...
It was a melancholy, long palm Sunday:
You, broken by love as a reed on the waters
That trembles and under the wave in secret bleeds,
I quivering, death-eager to set forth
Upon the sea where mariners sail by the stars.
We heard the lively tinkling of cart-bells,
Equally disturbed by our different thoughts,
And the gray sky weighed upon our wounded souls.
Shall I come back to sleep in your childhood's room,
Shall I come back, with the wind upon my lashes,
To watch beneath the shed for the first star,
To inhale, form the depths of your rosewood chest,
Amidst the yellowing pile of old sealed letters,
The love that alone survives the ashes of things?
Jammes, when one leans on your window-sill, one sees
Villas and fields, the horizon and far snows;
In May you read verse out-doors, quietly,
The blue of the heavens fills the gutters of your roof ...
Harmonious dwelling, friend, will I see you again?

Tomorrow, alas! Better think of yesterday.
A spirit without a home dwells in my body.
Tonight, one of the most grievous I have borne,
While, with their glory spread upon the sea,
The rays of the setting sun struck gold the strand—
My hair bathed with foam and wind, I went
Rolled like a pebble by the power of my dream;
The dreadful rumble of the waves drew me on,
The voice of burnt lands, volcanoes, distant isles.
My heart surged with the thought of you; I took a stone
Veined like an arm, pure, and white as milk,
To mark the day I crossed your threshold, Virgil's child.





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