After The Deluge

 

 

As soon as the idea of the Deluge had subsided,

 

A hare stopped in the clover and swaying flowerbells, and said a prayer

to the rainbow, through the spider's web.

 

Oh! the precious stones that began to hide,-- and the flowers that

already looked around.

 

In the dirty main street, stalls were set up and boats were hauled toward

the sea, high tiered as in old prints.

 

Blood flowed at Blue Beard's,-- through slaughterhouses, in circuses,

where the windows were blanched by God's seal. Blood and milk flowed.

 

Beavers built. "Mazagrans" smoked in the little bars.

 

In the big glass house, still dripping, children in mourning looked at

the marvelous pictures.

 

A door banged; and in the village square the little boy waved his arms,

understood by weather vanes and cocks on steeples everywhere, in the

bursting shower.

 

Madame *** installed a piano in the Alps. Mass and first communions were

celebrated at the hundred thousand altars of the cathedral.

 

Caravans set out. And Hotel Splendid was built in the chaos of ice and of

the polar night.

 

Ever after the moon heard jackals howling across the deserts of thyme,

and eclogues in wooden shoes growling in the orchard. Then in the violet

and budding forest, Eucharis told me it was spring.

 

Gush, pond,-- Foam, roll on the bridge and over the woods;-- black palls

and organs, lightening and thunder, rise and roll;-- waters and sorrows

rise and launch the Floods again.

 

For since they have been dissipated-- oh! the precious stones being

buried and the opened flowers!-- it's unbearable! and the Queen, the

Witch who lights her fire in the earthen pot will never tell us what she

knows, and what we do not know.