A Poem by Karla Linn Merrifield

Ménage à Trois

 

      for David Richter 

 

Once upon Rimbaud’s 1870s time

in a Left Bank gay quartier, as a man

fragmented, saturated, he first wrote,

first recited in public the 100-line poem

of a drunken boat, boat like himself,

drifting, sinking at sea, lost

in the shadowed arrondissement of loss.

 

Once upon his time, a century later, Richter lived

just around the corner, one steep flight up

at #4 Rue de Canivet, window shutters open

to Saint Sulpice at his back (in case of guilt),

Steinway facing south so he could play nocturnes

for the bronzed, muscled pagan statuary

in Luxumbourg’s lush garden of easy liaisons.

 

Once upon a time this summer in Paris,

just down the street, I stared at gaunt twin ghosts

haunting the worn cobblestone ways of doubt,

the narrow, shadowy paths from pain.

From nearby belfry rings the hour of need,

from apartment window sounds a coda-echo of desire

from marble wall etched with“Le Bâteau Ivre—

I read in full— at long last write my Chanson d’ Amour—

in reply—

 

 

                

An eight-time Pushcart-Prize nominee and National Park Artist-in-Residence, Karla Linn Merrifield has had some 400 poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has ten books to her credit, the newest of which are Lithic Scatter and Other Poems (Mercury Heartlink) and Attaining Canopy: Amazon Poems (FootHills Publishing). Forthcoming from Salmon Poetry is Athabaskan Fractal and Other Poems of the Far North. She is assistant editor and poetry book reviewer for The Centrifugal Eye (www.centrifugaleye.com), a member of the board of directors of TallGrass Writers Guild and of Just Poets (Rochester, NY), and a member of the New Mexico State Poetry Society. Visit her blog, Vagabond Poet, at http://karlalinn.blogspot.com.