Lilith

BANQUET MACABRE
À la santé du rire ! Et j'élève ma coupe,
Et je bois follement comme un rapin joyeux.
Ô le rire ! Ha ! ha ! ha ! qui met la flamme aux yeux,
Ce vaisseau d'or qui glisse avec l'amour en poupe !
Vogue pour la gaieté de Riquet-à-la-Houppe !
En bons bossus joufflus gouaillons pour le mieux.
Que les bruits du cristal éveillent nos aïeux
Du grand sommeil de pierre où s'entasse leur groupe.
Ils nous viennent, claquant leurs vieux os : les voilà !
Qu'on les assoie en ronde au souper de gala.
À la santé du rire et des pères squelettes !
Versez le vin funèbre aux verres par longs flots,
Et buvons à la Mort dans leurs crânes, poètes,
Pour étouffer en nous la rage des sanglots !
-Emile Nelligan
MEWITHOUTYOU - In a sweater poorly knit
In a sweater poorly knit, and an unsuspecting smile
Little Moses drifts downstream in the Nile
A fumbling reply -- an awkward, rigid laugh
I'm carried helpless by my floating basket raft
Your flavor in my mind swings back and forth between sweeter than any wine, and bitter as mustard greens
Light and dark as honeydew and pumpernickle bread
The trap I set for you seems to have caught my leg instead
As you plow some other field and try and forget my name, see what harvest yields, and, supposing I'd do the same
I planted rows of peas, but by the first week of july -- they should have come up to my knees but they were maybe ankle high
Take the fingers from your flute to weave your colored yarns, and boil down your fruit to preserves in mason jars
But now books are overdue and the goats are underfed... the trap I set for you seems to have caught my leg instead
You're a door-without-a-key, a field-without-a-fence
You made a holy fool of me, and I've thanked you ever since
If she comes circling back, we'll end where we'd begun
Like two pennies on the train track the train crushed into one
Or if I'm a crown without a king, if I'm a broken, open seed
If I come without a thing, I come with all I need
No boat out in the blue, no place to rest your head
The trap I set for you seems to have caught my leg instead
I do not exist.
Only you exist.