☀ What Sparks Poetry: Olivia E. Sears on Ardengo Soffici's "Rainbow"

Dip 7 brushes into your heart that was 36 years old yesterday April 7th
And touch up that face worn down by the passing seasons

You’ve ridden life like a nickel-plated carousel mermaid
Whirling
From city to city from philosophy to frenzy
From love to passion from royalty to poverty
There isn’t a church movie theater newsroom or bar that you don’t know
You’ve slept in every family’s bed

There should be a carnival
Of all the sorrows
Forgotten along with umbrellas in the cafés of Europe

Gone in a cloud of smoke with handkerchiefs in the sleeping cars of express trains
heading north or south

Countries hours
There are voices that follow you everywhere like the moon or a dog
But also the whistle of a smokestack
That mixes up the colors of the morning
And of dreams
No, you won’t forget the fragrance of certain nights drowned in armpits of topaz
These cold narcissus that I keep on the table by the inkwell
Were painted on the walls of Room 19 of the Hôtel des Anglais in Rouen
A train was rambling along the quay late at night
Beneath our window
Beheading the reflections of multicolored lanterns
Among casks of Sicilian wine
And the Seine was a garden of blazing flags

There is no more time
Space
Is a twilight worm coiled in a drop of phosphorus
Everything is present
Just as in 1902 you’re in a garret in Paris

Sheltered by 35 square centimeters of sky
Melting across the glass of the skylight
La Ville offers you again each morning
The flowering bouquet of Square de Cluny
From Boulevard Saint-Germain bursting with trams and buses
The evening arrives with the hoarse cry of the paperboy
On Rue de la Harpe
Pari-cûrses L’Intransigeant La Presse
The shoe store Chaussures Raoul still rivals the stars
And I rub my hands stained with the liquors of sunset
Like that time I thought about suicide near Rigoletto’s house

Yes my friend
The fortunate man knows how to live with uncertainty like the flowers
Look at that gentleman strolling past
As he lights his cigar proud of his manly vigor
Restored by the page-four spreads in the daily papers
Or that cavalryman galloping through the indigo darkness of his barracks
A sprig of lilac between his teeth
Eternity shines in the flight of a housefly

Place the colors of your eyes side by side
And draw your own arc

History is as fleeting as a nod at the train station
And the tricolor automobile of the sun keeps breaking its own record
pointlessly amid the used machinery of the cosmos
You remember along with a kiss planted in darkness
The window of a German bookshop in Avenue de l’Opéra
And the goat grazing on yellow broom
Among the ruined stairs of the palace of Darius at Persepolis
You need only look around
And write as you dream
To revive the face of our joy

I remember all the climates that caressed my skin like a lover
All the countries and cultures
Shining on my desire
Snows
Yellow seas
Gongs
Caravans
Carmine of Bombay burnt gold of Iran
Whose hieroglyph I carry on this black wing
Sunflower soul the phenomenon converges here in the center of this dance
But the most beautiful song is still that of the naked senses

Silence music of the south
Here and in the world circular poetry
Today marries always
In the crown of the rising rainbow
I sit at my table and I smoke and stare
A young leaf is trilling in the garden before me
White doves flutter through the air like love letters thrown from the window
I know the symbol the code the electrical
Connection
The attraction of faraway things
But we’ll need fruit and lights and crowds
To festoon this Easter with miracles

The day sinks into the scarlet basin of summer
And there are no more words
For that bridge of fire and jewels

Youth you’ll pass like the end of every play
Tant pis Never mind I’ll make myself a magnificent suit out of old posters