Camille Claudel Poem by Bernard Henrie

They are dead now,
my scribbling can harm no one.

I cannot say with what purpose
or hope my journey to the asylum.
Montparnasse to Avignon,
six kilometers more to reach
the mental wards.

One outcast visiting another.

Debussy told me about Camille.
The lawyer worms had gotten into
his life, he owed 3,600 francs of alimony
according to the newspapers.
On that sum I could have stopped selling
my charms and retired.

I was not the audience for classical
music, but who can dislike
Clair de Lune?
I went to the salons for customers,
no need to pretend otherwise.

He sang, played out glissando.
I felt hypnotized by the rhythmic
hammers revealed by the open case;
my face bathed in the burl wood
of the piano like candlelight;

he rapped a glass pane to imitate
the glockenspiel.

Every woman looked twice,
but he was penniless, valuable
only because he attracted the rich.

When he showed me Camille’s gift,
her sculpture of La Valse- -
dancers frozen in a moment of joy;
I felt the electro-magnetism
talked about that year.

The couple do not quite touch,
but I thought myself spying on them
in the boudoir; oh, the heat.

Debussy was dying of rectal cancer,
the first man I ever heard mention
the word colostomy; twisted in pain,
yet he worked, smoked and talked;
he said Camille’s mother sent her away
and would not allow her home again.

I determined to visit Claudel
when the war years made it possible.

His name opened the grounds to me,
but not to her cell and we never met.

At exercise time, I watched her escort
a dwarf and a disabled patient outdoors.
she was motherly and no longer seemed
to rage over Rodin- -we never spoke
but I disliked him on principle.

She remained locked-up for thirty years.
The beauty I saw in photographs
worn down like the marble sculpture
at the garden's entrance for years;
her speaking voice rasping and metallic
when she came closer, but protected
by a warder I could not speak to her.

The war ended, Gabrielle Dupont,
a Debussy lover for ten years
and the daughter of my tailor at Lisieux
fired a shot at him, Gaby of green eyes
we called her;

Lilly Texier, another disappointed lover
shot a bullet into her own chest to lodge
there for life.

Baudelaire wrote, “Sounds and scents
turn on the evening air'
and these words gave a static calm.
I follow the ebb tide of my heart,
swept away and inevitably swept back.




























They are dead now,
my scribbling can harm no one.

I cannot say with what purpose
or hope my journey to the asylum.
Montparnasse to Avignon,
six kilometers more to reach
the mental wards.

One outcast visiting another.

Debussy told me about Camille.
The lawyer worms had gotten into
his life, he owed 3,600 francs of alimony
according to the newspapers.
On that sum I could have stopped selling
my charms and retired.

I was not the audience for classical
music, but who can dislike
Clair de Lune?
I went to the salons for customers,
no need to pretend otherwise.

He sang, played out glissando.
I felt hypnotized by the rhythmic
hammers revealed by the open case;
my face bathed in the burl wood
of the piano like candlelight;

he rapped a glass pane to imitate
the glockenspiel.

Every woman looked twice,
but he was penniless, valuable
only because he attracted the rich.

When he showed me Camille’s gift,
her sculpture of La Valse- -
dancers frozen in a moment of joy;
I felt the electro-magnetism
talked about that year.

The couple do not quite touch,
but I thought myself spying on them
in the boudoir; oh, the heat.

Debussy was dying of rectal cancer,
the first man I ever heard mention
the word colostomy; twisted in pain,
yet he worked, smoked and talked;
he said Camille’s mother sent her away
and would not allow her home again.

I determined to visit Claudel
when the war years made it possible.

His name opened the grounds to me,
but not to her cell and we never met.

At exercise time, I watched her escort
a dwarf and a disabled patient outdoors.
she was motherly and no longer seemed
to rage over Rodin- -we never spoke
but I disliked him on principle.

She remained locked-up for thirty years.
The beauty I saw in photographs
worn down like a marble sculpture
outside for years, her speaking
voice rasping and metallic
when she came closer, but protected
by a warder I could not speak to her.

The war ended, Gabrielle Dupont,
a Debussy lover for ten years
and the daughter of my tailor at Lisieux
fired a shot at him, Gaby of green eyes
we called her;

Lilly Texier, another disappointed lover
shot a bullet into her own chest to lodge
there for life.

Baudelaire wrote, “Sounds and scents
turn on the evening air'
and these words gave a static calm.
I follow the ebb tide of my heart,
swept away and inevitably swept back.