The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

RENÉE VIVIEN

Your eyes will gleam like phosphor
Through the dusk where no dawn laughs.

I am the being your bare breast once charmed,
Unable to hate or love you enough,

Whom you devoured as does your own escort,
Those crabs whose hunger is sated on dead flesh...

Come, I’ll draw you the bitter water,
To love your death there in the sea’s night.
—mary ann caws