Palace

for Max Jacob


Toward Rosemonde’s palace in the depth of Dream
My reveries step out barefoot to their revelery
A king’s gift the palace like a naked king rises
Whipped flesh and rose garden roses

In the garden’s depths we see my thoughts
Smiling at the concert the frogs are performing
They fancy the cypress trees those big distaffs
And the sun the roses’ mirror is shattered

Bleeding stigmatized hands pressing the windows
What archer wounded by sunset punctured them
The resin that renders the wines of Cypress bitter
My mouth has tasted this at the white lamb’s love-feast

Sitting on the adulterous king’s pointed knees
In her May years and dressed to the nines
Lady Rosemonde rolls her small round eyes
With mysterious air like the eyes of the Huns

Lady of my thoughts asshole of natural pearl
Neither pearl nor asshole can match the Orient
Who do you await
Reveries marching toward the Orient
My loveliest neighbors

Knock knock Come into the waiting room day closes
In shadows the night-light's a baked gold gem
Hang your heads by their braids on the hat-pegs
Sky nearly nocturnal glints with needles

We entered the dining room our nostrils
Filled with the odor of burnt lard & phlegm
We had twenty soups three the color of urine
And the king had two poached eggs in broth

Then the kitchen boys brought in the meat
Roasts of thoughts that died in my brain
My lovely stillborn dreams in underdone rashers
And my gamey memories in meat pies

Now these thoughts dead for millenia
Had the bland taste of frozen mammoths
Bones or dreamers came from the bone-yard
In a dance of death along my cerebellum’s folds

And all these meats shouted unheard of things
        But by God!
        Famished stomachs lack ears
And the guests all tried to out-chew each other

By God! cried the sirloins then
Those big meat pies marrowbones beef stews
Tongues of fire where are my pentacosts
My thoughts of all lands and all times

Apollinaire
translation by Jack Hayes
© 2010