The Masked Ball

Crystal, buffets in telegraphic style
Abhor your kisses, rabble they beguile
Mirror, moon, mirrors unbesmirched
Where bees in violins are perched
Mirror, moon, the heart of the crowd awhile
— Leopard-print carpets — Scapin's song, his smile
Mirror, moon, the mirrors' dispute
Between the graceful glass-blown flutes, the lutes.
Posthumous ball in costume
Where the crowd is inflamed for not having lanced its imposthume
And is impertinent. If this mob sneers
At ideal artichokes, the chandeliers
That whisper icy poles to ceiling frescoes...
...In the manner of Watteau, full of meadows
And airy boats that sail the woodland beauty
(Meadows always rhyme with Punch and Judy)
Felix and Phyllis flatter Phoenicia
With Persia's velvet headgear all in furs
She wears her dress long and streaked with vultures
The daughters Acteon had with Fantasia
Behind Eurotas call on you: "Guastalla!"
And Pallas the Greek sits down close to Allah.
            Of scarlet suit the sale
            Is made by a pawnbroker
Sosie the sap turns red-hot poker
            Who once was onion-pale
            Lady Sosie weeps her tears
            Of rage while in full fig
            Which the greater fool appears
            The mullet or the wig?
Leander's a bug and Daphnis a recruit
And Dorimène's an ashtray made of glass
The shepherd from the sunny mountain pass
On hardwood breaks the walnuts with his boot
Aristarch, you have a scheme that wrecks
Their czardas; it's your sneaker-checkered spandex.
There's Masséna! Louis 15th's tailor
And Coppélia! she's a country dancer.
            "I think it's working
            How surprising!
            It's a rare importunity
            You must try the caviar, really
            Just dip your toothpick in it, darling!"
The dancers taught the crowd a hot abscess
To love geography in native dress
The worst are from the Pyrenees,
Epirus! The minarets of Benares
Calabria and its hats and breeches
Whose sleeves stand up like rearing ponies
Steam iron helms, victors at Salamis
Masks with one nose only, looking nauseous.



Characters at the masked ball:
Lofty hag with eagle

A cobweb's droplets beams of light suffuse.
A joyful tear your misty face bedews
            Lofty hag with eagle
Monument whose mossy cornice hangs
Thus lies the lip upon the tender fangs
            Lofty hag with eagle



Characters at the masked ball:
Marsupio

A bit of chamomile?
His daughter smiles
An herbal tea?
Was granny's plea.
— Darlings, don't pester me! No, no!
Please don't coddle!
Am I a molly or a manly model?
            Since Matamore's
            No more
            It's Marsupio
            Who runs the show.
His curly hair is always dandruff-free
The letter-opener gives him the key
To penetrate your dossier, human race
The eye precedes the hand to judge this case.
He's never slackened, stumbled, slipped or sinned.
Esquisite taste, his health is awesome
He walks like an opossum
In hunter's garb he's not to be sneezed at
A spear? while he leads his sister's brat?
Honor, wealth (just enough), a charming wife
Although he used to say: "Not on your life!"
He has it all, but yearns in vain for danger!
To food and drink he seems a total stranger.
Precise in word, wrathful or good humored,
This angel of war is a Lutheran pastor,
            Since Matamore's
            No more
            It's Marsupio
            Who runs the show.



More characters at the masked ball:
Serenade

I'm round-shouldered, my whiskers touch my spats
Without a backside, here's your paramour
Warbling at your window's virgil mignonettes
Damsel of the entresol in gloves of blue velour.
Whenever your clock strikes
Out comes a king on a spinning wheel
Behold his crown's quintuple spikes
And that's your coat of arms, big deal
Blue coral shadows or pale amethyst
The fern's eyelashes
Separate the glass from flashes
Of the light
Window: cigar that dangles from the cosmic lip.

Shatter the silence of her beauty sleep
O candle's faithful infidelity
It nourishes a hope in secrecy
The people of Pamplona
Wish upon the moon-a
But my heart's key signature is natural
And that's what keeps afloat
The lakes and stars alike
At home
Your shoes would have been less painful
The inner gate into the world
Is an obscenity
I am like a horse that trembles
From bridle to pelt
Because the amazon wears a sea urchin



More characters at the masked ball:
As a Family

We are no longer little girls
One has to learn how hats are made
And you, brother?...Ah! deceiver!
Mother, hush! He needs a lesson.
I'll peek one eye up the table.
Aren't your hands like your sisters'?
Don't you have five limbs, with your head?
Don't you have five senses, vision,
taste, smell, hearing? Mother tries to...
The four of them looked up the table
At Mother studying her rings.

What a large table! All Soul's Day
The room shines, this is no white day
A star shines upon your brother.



More characters at the masked ball:
Malvina

This one I should hope will frighten you
Miss Malvina's never seen without her fan
Since the day she died.
Studded with gold is her pearl-grey glove.
She can twist herself in knots like a gypsy waltz
At your door she dies of love, just beside
The canes along the sandstone walls.
Let's just say she died of diabetes
Killed by the thick perfume that bowed her head
An honest thing, so chaste and undemented!
Less a gourmet than a glutton, moody
She graduated magna cum laude
In top hats they came to court the lady
They'd need an army to seduce the maid
Malvina! God be with you, restless shade.

Ekleksographia:
Wave Two

October, 2009

Poems

Alexander Dickow translates Max Jacob

Max Jacob (1876-1944) was a French poet and painter. Born into a non-practicing Jewish family in Quimper, Brittany, he experienced mystic visions in 1909, and converted to Catholicism several years later. An eccentric and an exceptional wit, he is best known for his 1917 collection of prose poems, The Dice Cup. Jacob's work has left a lasting mark on American poetry through the likes of John Ashbery, Ron Padgett and Frank O'Hara. He died at the Drancy deportation camp. (See also Max-Jacob.com.)

Max Jacob's bal masqué suite originally appeared in literary journals between 1913 and 1919. Collected in The Central Laboratory (Au Sans Pareil, 1921), Francis Poulenc set several of these poems to music in his delightful Bal masqué, produced as a concert-performance in 1932. Although far less sober and poignant than Jacob's later poetry, these weirdly skewed poems swerve unpredictably between Mallarméan doilies and operetta gags, and have preserved their power to surprise...and unsettle. They are in many ways representative of the poet's production during the war years.

Alexander Dickow is a poet and translator who grew up in Moscow, Idaho and currently lives in Châtillon, France. He is the author of Caramboles (Paris: Argol Editions, 2008), a book of poetry in French and English. Current projects include his weblog Voix Off, a sonnet sequence, translations of the Swiss poet Gustave Roud, and a vast and ambitious work co-written with his wife, entitled Child (Paris: Imprimerie Béclère, forthcoming in December, 2009).