Monday rue Christine


The concierge’s mother and the concierge will let anything go by
If you’re a man you’ll go with me tonight
All we’d need is one guy to hold the main door
While the other one goes up

Three lit gas jets
The boss has TB
When you’re finished we’ll play a game of backgammon
An orchestra conductor with a sore throat
When you come to Tunis I’ll get you some dope to smoke

That rings a bell

Piles of saucers some flowers a calendar
Bim bam bim
Hell I owe 300 francs to my landlady
I’d rather cut off my dong than pay her

I leave at 8:27 p.m.
Six mirrors look back and forth at themselves endlessly
I think it’s going to get even more confused
Dear Sir
You’re a joke
That lady holds more food than a garbage can
Louise forgot her fur
Well I don’t even have a fur and I’m not cold
The Dane smokes his cigarette over a timetable
The black cat crosses the bar

Those crêpes were marvelous
The faucet is running
Dress black like her fingernails
It’s completely impossible
Here you are sir
The malachite ring
The floor is strewn with sawdust
So it’s true
The red-headed waitress ran away with a bookseller

A newspaperman I know only very slightly

Listen Jacques I have something very serious to say to you

Passengers and cargo

He says to me Sir would you care to see what I can do in the way of etchings and
     paintings
I have only one small maid

After lunch Café du Luxembourg

Once there he introduces me to this big fat fellow
Who says
Listen, it’s charming
In Smyrna in Naples in Tunis
But where in the name of God is that
The last time I was in China
Eight or nine years ago
Honor often depends on what time of day it is
The royal flush

Credit

From Zone: Selected Poems of Guillaume Apollinaire. Published by New York Review Books. Translation Copyright © 2015 by Ron Padgett.