Rob Couteau

THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG
 
The umbrellas of Cherbourg
as seen from above
twirl like pastel-colored saucers
     hovering over
slick wet cobblestone.
Their shimmering hues dance
in defiance
of despair.
 
Guy Foucher
(pronounced “gēē,” the French way)
paces alone beneath an umbrella.
In his hands he holds defeat.
His anguish sends him whirling,
yet only in abandonment
will he cobble together
his heart once again.
 
Geneviève
is garlanded with beauty;
no wonder a diamond merchant
wants to set her like a stone upon a ring.
As Roland whisks her away from Guy,
she falls into the trap.
For she remains unaware
that the sun is a huge scarab beetle
pushing a ball of dung
above a dusty ground.
This means:
only among common objects
will we find our proper place,
and even our joy,
despite the lofty measure
of the solar deity.
“It’s strange how sun and death
travel together,” she says,
yet this brief insight
has arrived too late. 
 
Geneviève once considered herself
“A girl who laughs at anything
and who says love’s a lovely thing.”
But when Guy is rescued by Madeleine
she’s no longer laughing.
“We have chosen a life together,”
Guy muses
while regarding his new comrade,
a woman who’s never laughed
     about love
or grown enraptured
over lofty things.
 
Sometimes,
love is not a given
but, instead, is simply chosen.




THOMAS KNEW BEST WHAT HE KNEW LEAST OF ALL
 
Thomas always
had to be right.
No two ways about it:
he always (thought he)
     knew best.
He was a doubting
Thomas
as regards anything
that slipped past
the slippery five senses:
Metaphysics and philosophy
were merely invisible fish
swimming in maddening pools
     of insane brains;
Thomas had no doubt
about this
or about being
a doubter.
He would argue not
with conviction
but with zeal:
not the same thing.
Zeal
is a fundamentalist illness:    
a plague infecting
every level of society:
today’s believers;
tomorrow’s doubters;
yesterday’s fishy madmen,
all fundamentally
the same.
 
At least he recognized
the wonders of the world,
it’s little natural
miracles:
deer, snowflakes,
a child’s awe, a trilling bird.
But it’s wonder
only seemed more awful
more terrible
when death struck
and suffering flesh
     cried
in trilling pain.
 
This poem is for Thomas.
There are no good answers;
just don’t take God’s
misdemeanors
personally,
Man.





THE FOOLISH JOY OF THE YOUNG BULL
 
There’s snow out there,
mocking the memory
     of sunshine.
Do seasons compete,
taunting and teasing each other,
or do they harmonize,
dovetail,
and interlock with smooth,
     unassuming grace?
When snow melts,
does it more resemble
a trickle of teardrops
or a bursting
orgasmic riverrun
of joy?
 
She had her seasons, too.
Where merry spring
and burning summer
had, just moments before,
engendered new life,
now, only ice floes
and barren plains.
 
During a winter
of such discontent,
a witch within her
     stuck pins
into my waxen heart.
The miracle of ice
is that it ever dissolves,
but something happens
in the meantime,
between ourselves,
and since there’s truth
     in wine,
among the drunken cups
of our hearts,
between the dog and wolf,
between the slaughter
of a sacrificial victim
           (me)
and its being laid
to rest,
eo ipso,
by that very act,
for her it is an auspicious year.
(Woe to the conquered!)
For the pig teaches
the goddess of wisdom:
“I do not love you,
     and cannot
          say why.”





INFINITE PROPOSITION
 
The boys whiz by
on skateboards
made of steel.
A sprightly
young woman
in elegant heels
     clip-clops
through sunlight,
her skirt of modest length
     rippling lazily,
her legs
firm stalks of flesh
marching
with regal gait.
The queen
has replicated herself
     endlessly,
and her minions,
as dumb as drones
insipidly droning,
skitter and fly
in widening circles
with a disposition
of infinite ease,
            like an ankh
                              looping
                  lethargically
back upon itself.
 
The boys hover
     in midair.
Neither queen nor drone
     is aware
of a single drop of nectar
that teases parched lips,
dangling 
 
                      over a precipice.





THE WINE OF YOUTH   (for Jim Lampos)
We would while away the hours
puffing on cigars
like nineteenth-century flâneurs,
strolling through life as if
it were an endless promenade.
Where we were going
or how we were getting there
was not our concern.
But beware!
By mid journey,
a gale may overtake you
despite your pharaonic collar
of quartz, lapis lazuli, green feldspar,
despite your lotus blossom of colored glass
or falcon’s head of gold.
Yet, one must never forget:
even when shedding the countenance
of youth, as long as your lips are fleshy
you will wear a blue crown
and grasp firmly the poppy buds
of the queen
as she extends her hand
in the form of an ankh.

In ancient Egypt,
the hieroglyph for “life”
was the same as that of “handheld mirror”:
where one gazes to behold
an ephemeral
miracle.

Osiris,
god of the dead,
has no business there