journal for new poetry
Timothy Donnelly
All Vanishes
after Comte de Lautréamont
Old ocean, salty bachelor, when you roam
the solitude of your realm, you are right to
grow boastful over the magnificence of what you are
and give birth to, plus all that love you get from poets!
Voluptuously balanced by the soft perfume
of your imperturbable slowness,
the most grandiose among the attributes
circumstance has bestowed on you, you unroll—
emboldened by your own ambiguity, and over the whole
of your surface—waves in cursive, demonstrating a steady
propensity for endlessness. Each hastens after the other
in parallel, individuated by an interval, a glimmer—no sooner
does one dissolve than the next rises up to meet it
where it dies, accompanied by the melancholy tone
of the foam as it melts into air, warning us that all is foam,
all vanishes, even the migratory bird
that rests on you with confidence, entrusting its body
to the movements of your body, proud
echo of your finesse, until the bones of its wings
recover, and are strong enough now to resume their flight.