Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THREE CANTICLES FOR MADAME SAINTE GENEVIEVE, by DUDLEY POORE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THREE CANTICLES FOR MADAME SAINTE GENEVIEVE, by                    
First Line: Kind saint, within your burnished casket lying
Last Line: Oh the ardour of the evening in the autumnal city!
Subject(s): Saints


I

Kind Saint, within your burnished casket lying,
where wasting tapers weep
tear after pompous trickling tear,
take of your goodness I pray you
this candle I offer,
golden as honey that the bees distil
into their dark close cells
through drowsy afternoons of summer
in droning thickets fragrant with rasphberries,
or golden as the tawny grape bunches
that hang among warm leaves,
each full globe swollen to bursting
with juices of untold sweetness,
so clear that the translucent sunlight
shows in each shining heart
the tiny core of seeds;
a candle fragrant as the October mist
that flows, smoky blue,
in your chilly evening city,
when twilight shades with rose and marigold
the end of long streets;
and with my offering take also
all my homage.

Hear me and be propitious.
Hide me in the close dark folds
of your trailing sleeves
that sweep the ground as you go,
softly, so softly,
with the whisper of autumnal leaves
blown by the glittering wind
along the moist pavement
down to the quay's edge
where under the bronzing plane-trees
in a haze of sweet-scented smoke
the autumn bonfires are burning.
Shake out the folds of your mantle over me
so I shall not feel the cold winds that are blowing
out of the tortured lands,
so I shall not hear the jackal voices that rise
against the shrunken sky,
for I am tired, tired,
of the snarling tongues
that urge on me night and day
their tedious hatreds.

II

If ever, kind Saint,
your ghost, its old habit resuming,
takes human form to walk
in these thronging streets,
how shall your face be known?
By what sign shall we tell you?

By garments of snowy wool
from seraphic looms,
stitched by the inspired needles
of sempstresses in glory
whose glimmering fingers float
languidly over the hem,
as float and veer
chestnut petals on the jade green river?

Or by your gleaming nimbus
that twirls and sparkles
through the warm, close pressing dark,
revolving in tempests of fire
with lights blue and green
like the Catherine-wheels of our childhood,
while the ebony water,
aglitter with burnished reflections,
trembles in the black shadow of the bridges?

Or by your green palm branch
a little tattered and worn
by the wind, by the rain,
by the angry thwacks you deal
at the swarming imps from hell
that rise in the semblance of urchins
to surround you and mock
when hasty dawn,
interrupting your diligent rounds
and dimming your nimbus,
sends you, with scuttling heels
and a flutter of snowy robes,
up an obscure stair
to your garret room on the Montagne
where, in the placid sunshine
under the weed-grown eaves,
the plump young cherubs,
seated like obese pigeons
on the sill by the potted geranium,
drone their sleepy canticles?

Or rather shall we not know you
by the dress, by the tufted mole,
of a marchande des quatre saisons
who with eyes that glitter
like an autumnal morning,
trundles a cart of ripe figs
down the sparkling street
where in heaps of amber and topaz
the tattered rags of the summer,
spilled last night from the rain-wet, shivering branches,
lie along brilliant pools
in whose glass
the revolving wheels of her cart
flash and are gone as she passes
over the grey, shining pavement?

III

Cold blue mist is flowing
in the long street
where the first pale blossoms
of the orange street lamps
shower their wealth of gleaming petals
on hurried forms that pass
like ghosts over the darkening pavement.

The cold blue mist is full of stirring scents.
Tingling odors of autumn
wander frostily on the air,
mixed with the winey fragrance
of October fruits.

Like heavy petals spilled
by the crisp evening wind
from roses overblown,
the orange light of the street lamps
falls on the flushed bright rinds
in their heaping trays,
on the grapes, golden green,
that crack at a touch,
overflowing with sharp sweet juices
cold to the warm lips and throat;
on shining nuts freshly stripped
of their enamelled green casings;
on pumpkins of orange vermilion,
seated in the pride of swollen majesty
like Chinese emperors,
or glimmering like October moons
of tarnished, ruddy gold,
that rise, languorous and heavy,
through the russet mist
beyond the yellow, thinning boughs.

On the sharp air
creeps a spicy odor
of delicate puckering wines,
distilled from the dark sunburnt earth
on vine-terraced hillsides
and packed to bursting
in crisp mottled skins
that the cold lips of the summer rain
and lusty fingers of the autumnal sun
have embrowned and reddened.

And from the street corner
where the chestnut-vender, shivering with the cold,
warms his gnarled hands over the glowing vents,
spirals of pale blue smoke
scented of roasting chestnuts
rise as from an altar,
rise through the darkening plane-tree
whose leaves are of burnished copper,
rise through the bronzed branches
in twisting, grey blue spirals
toward the watchful chimney-pots that stand
craning with bent heads,
black against the cold yellow sunset.
In the autumn twilight
all things seem dying
only through excess of life
and the ripened year,
perfectly rounded and mellow,
is ready to fall like the ripe fruit that drops
in the long grass
of a forgotten orchard.

Oh the fervour that wakes
in the smouldering blood,
more potent than the wistful fervour of spring,
when, with the lights and the cries,
comes, in the patch of sky
far down the darkening street,
the smoky flush of orange and apricot,
and the frosty air is atingle
with life fulfilled and golden!
Oh the ardour of the evening in the autumnal city!





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