Anniversary Poem for Anna de Noailles by Roger Hunt Carroll

November 14, 2012 at 11:29 am (Uncategorized)

ANNIVERSAIRE CXXXVI   Anna de Noailles   15 novembre 1876

Anna de Noailles

She has triumph enough of her own,
knowing now it’s only when she passes
the point of no return that she can sing
of an imagined returning to her past.

So many things slip beyond importance—
she lets them go, all of them, without catalogue
or droll recitation, in proper sequence or not:
making an inventory is not in her scheme.

It’s sufficient for her to recall her desire
as vividly cast in momentary memory
as it was in it’s first white heat;
that’s the heat she remembers most of all.

For her there are graceful trappings, stage sets,
fixed and appropriate for her scene—
flowers, yes, flowers she’ll always have
in terraced gardens stretching toward her lake.

She waves at them in their variegated display,
then turns to her desk to take her pen
in her powerful hand and scratch down
how night’s appearing just might shield day.

Roger Hunt Carroll  13 November 2012