Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE VOYAGE, by EUGENE JOLAS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE VOYAGE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I have buried the city
Last Line: The train is thundering toward eternity.
Subject(s): Cities; Earth; Railroads; Travel; Urban Life; World; Railways; Trains; Journeys; Trips


I have buried the city
the giant city is choked in a morning mist

desolate tombs rear against the horizon
speed speed express train
pound ponderous space
draw the curtain of your smoke
over my discords
tearful eyes
a handkerchief on the wharf
O Twentieth Century Flier
speed toward immense twilights
all my nostalgias are bleeding
I am on the watch for songs tender as a lover
I am seeking the symbols of a new legend

I become a visionary as I watch the countryside
villages and plains are rapid-motion films
the telegraph poles reel
shriveled fingers of a desire
all my companions shiver
sweet smoke above French towns
pale lips of old women mumbling prayers in the churches
old almanacs in attics deep with dust
steel bridges oddly lighted in the dusk
spring in a Chicago suburb
October sun over the Seine near Saint-Cloud
Alsatian taverns hung over loneliness
cathedrals in towns of the middle ages
mists over the forests in November
Connecticut mountains under the veil of the twilight
Diets of the Earth read in my room
babbling tones of a girl in love
attic crowded with bric-a-brac
enigmatic cats in dimly lighted alleys
farms in lonely places
cattle silhouetted against the horizon
demoniac nights of darkies in southern United States
dogs barking in the silence of a village
ramshackle houses with baroque gables
breasts of a maid in the electric light
hours with friends in talk of books and love and metaphysics
a thought as musical as the refrain of a ballade of Villon

speed speed
seek solitude
the train is thundering toward eternity.





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