Classic and Contemporary Poetry
ONE-HUNDRED-PER-CENT FRENCH, by CHARD POWERS SMITH First Line: A fellow never understands the french Last Line: "had learned to smile and ask, ""ca va, monsieur?" Subject(s): French Language | ||||||||
A fellow never understands the French. At home we all have systems for our lives -- Molds in which to pour the people we meet; And when we've poured them in, we like to look Important at the cast, thinking we've put "Things in their true relation." But in France They have no systems, and they don't fit mine. I'm in Cote d'Or, on a white-washed plaster farm That steams with purple clematis and bees. Madame, still well on this side of an age You couldn't guess, is an articulated Statue of Pallas -- marble, with blue-glass eyes And hair of golden straw. When I first came, She met me wearing organdie, pink and white, Framed in the clematis around the door. I shot a look at her -- not showing it Of course -- to put her in her proper place In my ideas. But I'd hardly started To size her up when with a jerk she turned Into the house, and shortly reappeared In a full-length apron, and, with proper smiles And protestations all about the heat, Showed me my room. As I recall it now, I haven't seen the organdie again. Monsieur the husband, handsome, with blue eyes That never laugh, yet never cease to smile, Permits madame to do the work. I asked her If she was never tired. Her face lighted -- "C'est l'habitude" -- that was the end of it. But then Monsieur, a hero three times wounded, Covered with medals, seemed the family symbol, The link that bound their lives to France. I classed These people with our own best Yankee farmers -- Steady and moral, practical, yet having Unconscious idealism. What fools we were To call the French unstable and erotic! I told Monsieur my judgment, and his eyes Almost jumped from his smile, so wide they opened. The near-by village is a walled-in pile Of gothic roofs and medieval smells, Where Madame Morin, a leathern wench of fifty, Parades the streets of sewage, screaming tales Of lovers past and future. Back at home She would be mad, but here she's only drole. She first encountered me one shadeless noon Before the main cafe. Her voice went up An octave, prophesying dire events. I saw and pitied, and she saw I saw -- At least that was my diagnosis then. All raving stopped, and since that day my name Is absent from the legend of her lovers. In the buvette beside the canal dike, Where starlings squeak like old signs in a wind That never comes, and marsh-birds squawk and flop, Yvette is bar-maid. Her dark beauty seemed Not the original but the ideal Of Leonardo's Madonna of the Rocks -- Dark eyes, unconscious, conscious power, the power Of France who works and suffers as she smiles. The second time I went my neighbor whispered, "Elle n'est pas mariee," and pointed out A baby. So I changed my dark madonna To Mary Magdalen. I hoped I might Get Yvette's story, but I never did -- The first time I went there she saw me once, But never looked again. It was a shock To learn my host, the gay poilu, the hero, Was keeping Magdalen. But then, I thought, I didn't know her story, and that's life, Most tragic where it is most beautiful. The thing had been there once, and was there still -- I'd seen it. Yet, though I refused to judge Yvette, the ugly knowledge of the fact Swelled the respect I had for my Madame: Innocent womanhood, too pure to doubt; Life consecrated to the ritual Of an ideal. What if that ideal Was actually a lie? For all we know Any of us may live on lies. It is The ritual that counts. One day Madame Was pulling lettuce. I was eating lunch Under the arbor. Earlier Monsieur Had gone to town, and something prompted me To ask Madame if she knew where he was. She humped a forty-kilo bale of lettuce Up on her back, and smiled: "Oh, il s'amuse, Perhaps with that cocotte-de-luxe Yvette, Perhaps with Madame Morin, or more likely With both at once. Oh, il est fort," she laughed, Proud as if showing off her best prize heifer, "To hold them both so long." She took her load Around the clematis, into the barn; And as she passed, the big black Cerberus -- The red-eyed watchdog Madame had chained up To save my life -- stood up and wagged his tail. That night on my straw mattress, I recalled Madame's white organdie, Monsieur's wide eyes, Madame Morin's original prophecies, Yvette's first look; but how they all by now Had learned to smile and ask, "Ca va, Monsieur?" | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A TRANSLATION by JAMES LAUGHLIN BALLAD TO THE TUNE - 'I'LL TELL THEE, DICK, THAT I HAVE BEEN' by PATRICK CAREY AT THE BAL MASQUE; COLUMBINE TO PIERROT by FORD MADOX FORD NEVER TOO LATE: INFIDA'S SONG by ROBERT GREENE NEVER TOO LATE: MULLIDOR'S MADRIGAL by ROBERT GREENE FRENCH AND ENGLISH by THOMAS HOOD FRENCH WITH A MASTER by THEODORE TILTON PREMIERE LECON by FLORENCE E. VON WIEN A GRAVE IN WINTER by CHARD POWERS SMITH |
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