Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ON RUE SAINT-JACQUES, by ANDRE SALMON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ON RUE SAINT-JACQUES, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: When I lived one hard winter on rue saint-jacques
Last Line: Item, all the past, and my regrets.
Subject(s): France; Villon, Francois (1431-1463)


When I lived one hard winter on rue Saint-Jacques
And a summer, chance had it, piping hot
Till winter came back,
In a cheap room with rep in every unsuitable spot—
Summer and winter alike savoring of the fall;
All day long I could recall
François Villon; while my neighbor scratched on his fiddle
And I thought of it all,
Lounging in the middle of my old bed, that probably
Was like the bed that he
Slept on in rue Saint-Jacques. And the savory
Smell of the taverns and the Easter chapel there
Swept a perfume through the air
Touched, in their season, with chrysanthemum
Or iris. René de Montigny, Jehan Cotard!
The fair armourer's wife, and big Margot!
There you are;
How you dance to and fro
In the light of my studio! You come
So vividly I cry "Phantoms, I love you all!" ...
When dusk would fall I lit my candle there
And the hat-rack marked a gallows on the wall
Papered with outlandish birds that it could wear
For crows ... I owe that some fair elegies.
Later they put me out for midnight sprees,
And one morning I had to quit the dive.
With heavy heart I climbed old rue Saint-Jacques,
Whose famous bell-towers rang the Easter chimes,
Following, as a pauper half-alive
Follows a hearse, with no look back,
The sad trundle-cart where my sad belongings clung.
There lay told rimes, and there a death's head hung,
Item, a lantern, item, an old broom,
A hatbox, flowers still fresh in the gloom
Of their casket, and the card's pert epithets,
Item, all the past, and my regrets.





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