Bouzingo: The Gathering of the Poets

Bouzingo: The Gathering of the Poets

The boy was aged about eighteen,
Pale and pensive,
Weary and frail in appearance.
He could have been
Goethe's Werther,
Senancour's Obermann
Or Chateaubriand's melancholy hero,
Embraced by a generation,
And about whom Sainte-Beuve said:
"Rene, c'est moi."
Tortured by a new mal du siecle,
He sought refuge
In the Club Bouzingo.
Two young poets,
One dark, the other fair,
Drifted past. The first,
Whose black hair
Hung in ringlets over his shoulders,
Wore a small pointed beard,
Black velvet tails,
A white linen shirt
Loosely fastened at the neck
By a thin pink taffeta tie;
The second wore a tight coat
That opened onto a silk crimson waistcoat
And a lace jabot, white trousers
With blue seams,
And a wide-brimmed black hat, and
In one of his hands
He carried a long thin pink-coloured pipe.
They were soon joined
By some of their dandified companions.
The music had stopped playing, and
The poet-leader in cape and gloves,
Dark and pomaded
With a Theophile Gautier moustache,
Took to the stage,
Where he proceeded to declaim
Selections from his subversive verses
To delirious cheers,
As if sedition was imminent;
Only the boy-poet remained silent,
His pale cheeks
Soaked by the freshest tears.
"Apres nous, le deluge,"
He said under his breath,
"Our leader preaches revolution
But provides no solution
As to the fate of coming generations,
Should the infant be cast out
With the bath water that is so filthy
In his sight
That, intent on doing right,
Gives no thought to the future,
Nor to what might supplant
The society he claims to despise."
The boy was aged about eighteen
Pale and pensive
Weary and frail in appearance.
He could have been
Goethe's Werther,
Senancour's Obermann
Or Chateaubriand's melancholy hero,
Embraced by a generation,
And about whom Sainte-Beuve said:
"Rene, c'est moi."
Tortured by a new mal du siecle,
He sought refuge
From the Club Bouzingo.