EDEN, TWO, THREE AND CHURNED-UP ME Poem by Valérie Rouzeau

EDEN, TWO, THREE AND CHURNED-UP ME



I

The horse has eaten the rose here is the Prince
His hair is all on end he must have run into a gale like a tree and feathers as he passed
Show me your neighbourhood he said and I take him by the hand
And show him right up close the tarmac of a colourful street
Four carrot-tops growing in the pavement
And now let's carry our party on
To French Rail there's a blue train leaving now
We hoof it on our pegs under the clothes-line where upon a time
My skirt once shivered (in the breeze of Praha then of Cordoba I awaited his return
Sowing a concrete Eden a garden the better to woo him with)
Then the cork pops out at the little train from the hands of my beloved and I'm deeply touched


II

(Back then at a friends' farewell I tore my mac as I plunged from a Tuileries wall into a deep grey pit of cypresses one night and did it on my shoes with an almost melodious sound then I started to climb) I go on under the stars


III

A single file of men from the Ivory Coast each one with a box on his head
(Lovely broccoli in broxes)
The yard where the borage grew in a breeze-block's hollow
(A party for his eyes for his eyes only)
I want to tell him something of myself and arsy-versy
This black ant sentence with its shoots of cabbage green or blue and waving is
An aphroparadisiac and huge
He won't need to put his glasses on to read my love


IV

At four in the morning under the moon he goes
In his Adam suit my lover goes to smell the rose
The rose that's opened in the courtyard's grey
Four in the morning naked under the moon the whole of the city could have seen him with his rose
Then I climbed to his neck
Like ivy holly
Hock and rose.

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