Tarte aux Pommes

(Place de la Cathedrale, Metz, France)

Precisely that direct angle of show and

glow knowledge inserts by yore intelligence

reinstitution of a mage crocus yellow within

unseen green it readies for spring

that deadly ferries dumb its passage

beneath the master snow.

There is a stretch and yawn

in tea rooms, where the heavy outer

garments, mauvegreyblackandfur

await informed upon mahogany polished

stands, whose crooks and scrolls bend

in ways the ocean kicks a wave

and they, starred and stayed earth anemone,

sift the rolling surge of garb.

yawh!Yawh!YAWH! The crowd voice

roars beyond the room, the outre mer

of politique the method-lived ignore.

Redbilled caps, cardinals in the snow,

and white obliterated banner by angry flurries

furls: One knows while looking at

categoried shells.

The indifference here a solitude of energy

held against the weight of time

for passage into numerals

the intelligence of signs.

A patience for space occurs

between the wings of doves

that nestle down the night.

The scarred and broken walls

buttressed by angled wings of force

wedge against the grey matriculated

light that sweeps the waiting stones,

the mortar scattered piles.

I have taken the part of objects,

animals, and things, have played

their role in life, felt the weight of

apple break away its stem,

and sweated its sections

breathing separate upon the plate.

Such assertions, fire seeds, circled

in core for a future of memory,

cat's paw withdrawing from the snow,

dog's paunch hefted down upon

his squatting haunch, bird's thermal fluff

of speckled feathers composed in scores

upon winter branches of the dormant trees,

present no inner life but life

interior pulsions in the subject finds.

In cold season, in weather, the stones conspire

against themselves, constrict from worldly

weight they wear. They lay away a

minimum of the history they share.

The cups are there and the plates

cluck to lay inevident critical

use for the evoluted form from

stone and speckled grain they become.

By this they seize acoustic

background noise that as

blue in universe of blue

the cosmos spurns.

The indifference here a solitude of energy

held against the weight of time

for passage into numerals

the intelligence of signs.

MOS A

AM OS

The oval there

becomes

I am bone.

Other layers in demarcated rings

brown for the culture of taking

pleasure and time featured by

rings within, interior of selves

that days empty to lips of thought

prefecture of eyes.

Her instep turns

so traced into the stone

that fingers plead

with sight of touch

to achieve the

inachieved.

To sleep in stone among their skins

to step into their bones as repose

of arrows resides in mastered flint

and flick of light that nights within.

To figure hard in their memory.

Stroked, like a rigid circle striking,

beaten, and after fallible inquisition,

marbled by a swirled stone.

Nature melts according to her whim.

What whim? Investiture

and a towered settlement after

flowing: her gesture. Thrown into

fusion, erosion an innerness

mended to a liquid restorative

unguent and procreative palisade:

These all pierce by unison.

Une longue ligne blanche d'écume

Elle s'éloigne contre moi

Comme le feu

À la lumière

A long white line of surf

She lengthens against me

Like fire

To the light

And yet the tea is here

the light upon the plate

and table and the tarte aux pommes

so rare the matrons in German know

whereof they speak the gossip

and intense novelty of the week

While I confound their sight

delight their mind

with obscurity and the crowd

outdoors, laborers marching in the snow,

the mass politique

lengthens against me

glows

like the cathedral light

beyond the room.

Note on the poem: This poem was written in March 1979 at Metz, France, when I was Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Metz, where I taught English and American literature, particularly poetry, to upper division French students preparing to pass the CAPES, the equivalent of an American teaching certificate, to become teachers of English in France. Some of my former students are now full professors at universities in the United States and others are excellent teachers of English in France. I love this poem because it calls up pleasant memories of my life in Metz, it is a tantalizing mix of aesthetics and politics, and my favorite dessert is, of course, tarte aux pommes. I wrote this poem in a little teashop near the Cathedral, where I would often go for tea and tarte aux pommes. The matrons of French descent would sit together in a group speaking French and watching across the room another group of matrons of German descent speaking German. I usually sat at a table between the two groups of elderly ladies and they would frequently talk about me and what I was doing there.

The impetus for the poem came when I was having my tea and tarte one snowy day in March and I heard muffled shouting from a crowd of workers "en chomage" (on strike) marching by in front of the teashop, carrying banners blowing in the snow. As I looked up from my notebook, I saw the man in front leading the protesters was wearing an anachronous red-billed baseball cap. This image started the poem. I worked on the poem in several "sittings," one in the spring when I was having a beer outside in the plaza. That's where the "AM OS" comes into the poem. "AMOS" is the name of a famous local beer of Metz, "La biere de Metz," which was printed in an oval on the coaster under my glass of beer. Who would know this? But as I was writing and thinking about history and the body politic, and my place in history at that very instant, one of Yeats's most persistent themes, and imagining myself as a stone among stones supporting the Cathedral, suddenly right in front of me, as I lift my glass to take a sip, is the Latin word "OS" (bone) and the evident "I am bone." I believe strongly in letting the immediate come into my poems as magic, and there it is, the magic right before you.

I also like the attitude of the Eliotic "poseur" in this poem, as it reminds me of what Wallace Stevens' wife Elsie once said when asked if she liked her husband's poems. She said, "Well, I like them when he isn't posing. But then, he is almost always posing, isn't he?" This statement is more remarkable if you know that Elsie posed for, and was the model for the head on the Mercury dime. You have to get over your attitude towards the persona in this poem. It's not my fault if you don't like him. Make an effort. Part of the psychological dynamic of this poem. Who really likes Prufrock? He doesn't even like himself. That is the point. That does not mean, however, that you should not learn to like my persona. After all, he is likable.

Look. I also wrote a pretty little imagist poem in French, right in the middle of the poem. And, of course, I have deliberately made an idiomatic error with "contre moi," but not without consulting first my French-speaking friends. I did this so as to retain the double entendre that "against" in English contains, whereby you can lean against someone for support, but stand against them in opposition. This is the double meaning I intend in the little poem and its translation. Sometimes it is better to make a linguistic or semantic oddity in order to create an unusual poem rather than keep the correct idiom and make an ordinary poem. Fluent French speakers reading this the first time always assume that I have made a mistake in their language. This is the cross-cultural risk you have to take. These things do not require defense or explanation, and I've said too much about this poem already.

Frank Cebulski

Tarte aux Pommes