WEBVTT

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This poem is called Complaint
of the Grandparents.

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Complaint because I
wish to acknowledge,

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do a little act of homage to
Laforgue, whose complaints

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I hope you know.

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The poem begins with a
little epigraph in fact

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from one of the Laforgue
complaints, which

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goes like this.

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Les morts c'est sous
terre, ca n'en sort, guere.

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Which, being translated
roughly, is something like this.

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The dead are underground.

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They don't go out.

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I want you to hear the rhythm.

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It's slightly jazzy for
the French of the period.

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Complaint of the Grandparents.

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Our diaries squat, toad-like,
on dark closet ledges.

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Forget-me-not and thistle
decalcomaned the pages.

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But where, where
can they be now?

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The delicate squalors of
our between-wars parlors?

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Sad ferns and the sunlight spilt
like soda on torporous rugs,

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the photo albums all outspread.

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The dead don't get
around much anymore.

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There was an hour when
daughters practiced arpeggios.

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Their mothers,
awkward and proud,

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would listen,
smoothing their hose.

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Sundays, half past 5:00.

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Do you recall how the sun
used to loll lazily just

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beyond the roof,
bloodshot and aloof?

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We thought it would never set.

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The dead don't get
around much anymore.

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Eternity resembles a
long Sunday afternoon.

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No traffic passes; the cigar
smoke coils in a blue cocoon.

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Children, have you nothing
for our cold sakes?

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No tea, no little teacakes?

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Sometimes now the rains
disturb even our remote suburb.

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There's a dampness underground.

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The dead don't get
around much anymore.