Unloveable Song

after apollinaire

by tristram fane saunders

A muggy London night. A mugger who looked just like my lover

sized me up and found me wanting. I couldn’t meet his eye.

I followed him, my bad boy, hands in pockets, earbuds in,

he moved like Moses to my Pharaoh, parted streets like seas.

Let walls fall down like waves. If you’re not loved by anyone

then I’m the bloody queen of Egypt and her husband-brother.

Turning down a noisy street the lights of the facades

smothered by redhanded mist wept for one who looked

like her. The same inhuman look. The scar on her naked neck.

Leaving a bar. I saw the trick ery of love itself.

Coming home at last, the wise Odysseus found his thread

bare rug of a dog remembered him. And the one he loved, still

waiting. Shankuntala’s royal husband, weary of making conquests,

wept with joy to find her, pale, beside their white gazelle.

I think about those lucky kings, the false love and the true,

whenever I see these lying shades of you, the shades of you.

The walls of hell are old regrets. Let the sky crack open.

Any king would die for you. For one kiss, sell his shadow.

I winter in my past here. Even when the sun of Easter

tries to melt a heart more cold than any Christian martyr’s.

O my ship of memory have we sailed enough

over all the bitter seas lush dawn to lonely evening.

Farewell my false, confusing love and the lady who looks like you,

the one I lost a year ago one muggy night in London.

O Milky Way, o sister of all pale rivers, all pale lovers,

we follow in your wake, like breathless shades of lifeless swimmers.

I remember another year an early April morning

I sang a song a lovely song and everything was open