so gifted so what is that it's not just Camille though there's Mme Moke moanin' mini the mother whose forearms are forewarned
2
she wants to know exactly how her baguette will be buttered
sister Nanci what you said about our fortune being founded only on our talents worried her a lot
straightening doilies till they tear
3
Camille Camille I love the dark hair of her looking through her blue sky eyes at who the hell am I when she told me she loved me my ears blinked & stuttered
4
I just had to win the Institute prize for money status & the gong I resisted each temptation to compose a Berlioz
I gave them what they wanted as the sounds & vibrations of revolution turned streets & facades to intimate whispers my redeeming percussion & Promised Land Camille & sound
5
for three glorious days the people were sublime
I even heard them singing Berlioz in the street my War Song
I went to join in without letting on & over ambitiously tried to right the tempo as the crowd grew & the times changed
we could hardly move
three National Guardsman kept audience & choir apart & even passed around their caps in a whip-round for those injured in the uprising
people coughed up as much for the absurdity as for the victims
we reversed like dogs guided by sheep
& backed into the Galerie Colbert hemmed in & squeezed to sing again from the upstairs window of a haberdasher's shop
what else but the Marseillaise?
6
everyone stood nicely shut up & listened
as we held forth like the bloody Pope
circumambient silence verse after verse after verse
until I shouted SING
& damn me if they didn't all start singing simultaneously in that confined space
a perfect performance unscripted & refined
full of ragged passion like the voice of France
for a moment I passed out on that wave
I won the Prix de Rome & scuttled around the Institute with the biggest hair in Europe
7
when the Symphonie fantastique was performed even moaning Mini Moke was impressed
we are to marry Camille & I when I return from Rome
in the morning I leave for the south
my parents' house & then the Alps
I have the Prix de Rome & thus am exiled for months
away from the sites of my art & heart
it's not the right time it goes without saying there is no such thing
8
I couldn't face the mid-winter Alps so I headed for the port of Marseilles
I've seen cosier graveyards in the rankest armpits of Paris
than the stinking sties that bobbed there moored inside the biggest piss-pot in the world
after days steering clear of the worst wrecks stenches & villains I bumped into
some simpatici Italians bound for Livorno on a Sardinian brig
we had to feed & fend for ourselves throughout the 4 day journey
so we stocked up for a week & eased out onto the glittering sea
the Mediterranean miracle & lunch in the salt & vinegar air
mixing Italian accents with French wine our stories & songs became richer strangers by the hour
9
in fact all the other passengers were Italian
one claimed to have captained Byron's boat down the coast of Italy to Greece
I loved his descriptions of gold-braid alcohol & orgies too much to demur
seven years now since the great man died it feels like none
