Lydia Grigorieva
Poet and Muse
Henri Rousseau lives in his forest
among pompous, pretentious buds.
When he was alive he never knew half-tones –
and the fatty plants grew riotously
and blocked out his light.
Hungry greens
and poisonous crimsons
overwhelmed his canvases.
There his friend Guillaume Apollinaire
is painted with the common face
of a huge, cunning prize idiot.
He was guest in this imagined forest
and is visually impressed
on these paintings I adore –
o, the childhood chill of imagination!
Apollinaire brought his love
through Customs to the forest,
and here is the forest
where they spent such a long time
on the soft grass,
among the flowers in the Asia Minor fumes.
That’s why
they look so absurd,
like mischievous children.
O, this forest is his place of creations!
When I enter it
my head spins
from the spicy fumes
and from love.[1980]
Translated by Richard McKane
Page(s) 149
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