Saturday, March 12, 2022

November 12, 1859: at the Cirque Napoléon - a poem by Karen Chamisso

 


Léotard “qui tenait le spectateur

sous l’empire d’un Plaisir

indefinissible »

 

did not die on the flying trapeze

in some circus tragedy.

He died of smallpox

 

after inventing a new thrill altogether

at the same time Baudelaire changed the weather

of the modern.

 

Baudelaire doesn’t mention him at all

-          while his “memoirs”, an illiterate scrawl

bring out a snide remark from the Goncourts.

 

“… la hardiesse des sauts périlleux

L’imprévu des case-cou”

-an alexandrine arrested in mid-motion

 

a caesura crossed, from one bar to the other.

His suit, which showed the effortless bother

of the muscular ripple of his too mortal flesh

 

was named for him. In the brief spasm

of his flip and grab, orgasm

washed across the faces of the gaslit crowd.

 

Did Emma B. in outtake carry home some sense

of the sex in this suspense

a syncopation lost?

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