Verlaine is – illuminatingly – a sinking limb
It is too late to abandon Paris, for him
He has wings like the figure of a figure; he
cannot fly: can barely sigh / complainLook up Verlaine, the lake is not blue, it’s
useless to you! Write that dream
You are in an orchard: a bird hypnotized by
the colours of the fruit trees. Verlainefollowing an upstart lorikeet called Rimbaud
(rainbow, rhyme beau) who always
tries to shake him off. It’s all very Death in
Castlemaine, Scenes from Mildura. Isthe lake a lake, the bird a bird, or but a fake
shadow, a half-thing? Did the poet
go down too slowly to the spring, too late?
His face has gone orange in the blue
Verlaine In The Lake
Michael Farrell
Feature Date
- September 12, 2018
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Copyright © 2018 by Michael Farrell
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission
Summer 2018
Sheffield
England
University of Sheffield
Editors
Alex Houen
Adam Piette
Blackbox Manifold is an online forum with a slant towards innovative poetry that has prose, narrative, or sequences in its sights. That said, we don’t hold allegiance to any one poetry school or group, and we’re happy to receive submissions from established and emerging poets alike. Our aim is to present new juxtapositions of voice while using the Web’s fluid solidity to cast around for as wide and varied a readership as possible. The journal is continuingly archived by the British Library in its Web Archive.
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