The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE

We shall try in vain to take our ease
They start at midnight
When one has time one has liberty
Periwinkles Turbot multiple Suns and the Sea-urchin of the setting sun
An old pair of yellow shoes in front of the window
Towers
Towers are streets
Wells
Wells are market places
Wells
Hollow trees which shelter vagabond Capresses
The Octoroons sing songs of dying
To their chestnut-colored wives
And the goose honk honk trumpets in the north
When racoon hunters
Scrape their pelts
Gleaming diamond
Vancouver
Where the train white with snow and fires of the night flees the winter
O Paris
The yellow fades from red to green
Paris Vancouver Hyères Maintenon New York and the Antilles
The window opens like an orange
Lovely fruit of light
—roger shattuck

Mirror

In this mirror I am enclosed living and true as one imagines angels not as
reflections are Guillaume Apollinaire
—roger shattuck