Redundancy in A T Cent Lay

 

Alex McKeown

 

 

“If one takes the rhyming parts (not necessarily reduced to one word) of certain sonnets of Stéphane Mallarmé Edna St. Vincent Millay, one will compose haikuesque poems which, far from letting the sense of the original escape, rather produce, it seems, a luminous elixir, to such an extent that one might ask if the parts which have been set aside weren’t pure redundancy.” 

 

         —Raymond Queneau, “La Redondance chez Phane Armé

 

 

 

 

i.

 

My heart

slain

apart

by tears and rain,

night

clears.

Light

appears.

 

Sweet thorn,

best

sworn

breast,

call

me little if at all.

 

 

 

ii.

 

Snow

again.

Long ago

the pane

at last

gave way;

The blast

in a fray.

 

Night,

drift

back to sight.

A gift

tore,

to be lived once more.

 

 

 

iii.

 

She brings

that

hat,

strings

all the things

(flat,

pat

offerings).

 

Shadows sprawl,

like a shawl,

the counterpane.

Hark!

The dark

spills again.

 

 

 

iv.

 

My joy!

Your tears

destroy

(shears

at the thread)

fine

unwarranted

fortune that is mine.

 

At least, my dear,

in the sun

blossoming year

you have gone...

Spring

be this, if it be anything.

 

 

 

v.

 

Grown

ill,

blown

across the sill,

it drummed

a time it might not be,

hummed,

raspingly.

 

Wings,

tongue,

among

springs,

somehow

would drum as it was drumming now.

 

 

 

vi.

 

Done

days;

Life goes on

in irritating ways.

All

need not be

a funeral.

 

Industry

her byname,

before

once more

came

the doctors eyes

when a person dies.

 

 

 

vii.

 

Dust

our eyes,

sweet Lust.

Wise

loins

into the sea

dive for copper coins,

no longer we,

 

breathers of the air

muffling mould.

There!

Cold...

Two

believing love was true.

 

 

 

viii.

 

Distressed

my kind

to find

zest;

My breast

designed

the mind

possessed.

 

Treason,

Brain!

Season

it plain!

Reason,

we meet again....

 

 

 

ix.

 

Part of me

had chance to live,

a sieve,

and be

free.

Thereby, fugitive,

let me give

immortality.

 

One passionate screed

I have writ

in bright need

and reach for it

indeed

no whit.

 

 

 

 

Source Sonnets:

 

i. Sweet love, sweet thorn, when lightly to my heart

ii. It came into her mind, seeing how the snow

iii. The light comes back with Columbine; she brings

iv. I pray you if you love me, bear my joy

v. The last white sawdust on the floor was grown

vi. The doctor asked her what she wanted done

vii. When we that wore the myrtle wear the dust,

viii. I, being born a woman and distressed

ix. And if I die, because that part of me

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alex McKeown is an Australian poet and translator.  His work has most recently appeared in Cordite, Ezra and The Canberra Times

 

 

 


 ē·                                                        <  ē·  >