Donald Revell

 

Jules and Jim

The sky was very near.
                                        Carved in stone
The sky was the hieratic face
                                                  Of Jeanne Moreau,
And the world was no place.

It was where Apollinaire had died.
It was where windmills did murder,
Where any man
                              Who is a pony only once
                              To only one child
Joined an army
Bringing death to the horses
                                                  And to the guitars inside them.

The sky was very near.
It had a girlfriend,
                              And thirty years later comes a letter
And a photograph too sad too vacant to describe
Although it is smiling.

Today the sky
                       In the Mojave desert is overfull
With sunrise and moonset.
                                             The morning star
Says a poem by Guillaume Apollinaire.
                                                              In the field over there
A wild pony runs with his music wild behind him in a cloud.

Because of a great movie
I have lived this far this long,
My worlds by worlds destroyed,
But never the sky, which is a girl
I can see through and see
All the boys running to be near her.