Here's a poem-- a strange poem called
"Les Neiges d'Antan" which means "The Snows d'Antan."
Actually, Villon wrote it.
I mean, he didn't write this poem,
but he wrote a poem about les neiges d'Antan.
You know that poem?
It was translated by Ruskin, Swinburne
or some other Victorian who--
someone will come after the readings, oh, that
was translated by--
where are the snows of yesteryear?
There's no word, yesteryear, in English.
Except yesteryear.
[LAUGHTER]
And it's a beautiful poem.
Villon is a great poet, the greatest,
one of the greatest of the [? American ?] poets.
And he wrote what he called his testaments, about his life.
The poems were very, very personal,
and they use-- like all great breakthrough artists,
they use the popular idiom.
The people said, well, you don't use language
like that in poetry.
As soon as you hear that being said,
you know you're into something good.
So it's about a woman named Ruth, who was a girlfriend when
I was 20 or 22.
And one day I was living in Indiana, PA,
and I read in the paper that this woman--
in the Indiana whatever it's called, Gazette--
that this woman Ruth was hit on the head with a tire iron
by her husband, because she was coming
from a-- in the middle of the night from a love affair.
And he discovered her, and he wasn't very generous.
So and I used--
I imitate some of the language from Villon.
"Where art thou now, thou Ruth?
Whose husband in the snow creased thy head
with a tire iron, thou who wore ridiculous hats when they were
the rage, and loved exotic cultures
and dances such as the Haitian Fling and the Portuguese
Locomotive.
My wife hated because of her snooty attitude,
or that her hair was swept up and her nose was aquiline,
and her two boys raised hell with our green apples
the Sunday they came to visit.
She in whose Mercury we parked for over a year, every night
in front of her mother's house, in one
of the slightly genteel streets that led into the park.
The other side downhill, really, from the merry-go-round.
Or where is Nancy?
Or who is the Nancy Ezra Pound located
in between his racial diatribes and dry lyrics?
Three times at least in the cantos.
But tell me where that snow is now.
And tell me-- as in where is Tangerine and where is Flora--
how old Ruth is?
And where does she live?
Does she still dance the Locomotive,
and does she bundle?"
I haven't been able to find Ruth.
The song in French goes "Dictes moy où, n'en quel pays, est Flora, la belle Romaine... Someone tell me where
is Flora, the beautiful Roman," so--