Poem: “Avertissement” by Natalie Clifford Barney

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American Literature – American Poetry – Natalie Clifford Barney – Poems from Natalie Clifford Barney
< < < With two dwarf Japanese maples
The Flute-Player > > >

Avertissement

Her name begins as Love begins,
Mine as “November”, “Nevermore”.

No thousand nights and one between these covers,
No miniatures, enluminures or dyes—
For art is but a prostitute that hovers
To court outsiders—you alone may prize
These pages which your idle hand unties?—

… Leaving art to artists—we, loves lovers,
Keep for out-worn Beauty a disguise.
—(A line traced round a shadow as it dies,
Some semblance of the scattered rose recovers?)—
So making everything seem otherwise:
Associations are our deities!
—And ivy leaves, transparent eggs of plovers
Are fragments of the feast they symbolize.—

Here, visible as sleeping Eros, lies
A book of dreams and broken memories,
A living past for which blind Love has eyes?

< < < With two dwarf Japanese maples
The Flute-Player > > >

American Literature – American Poetry –Natalie Clifford Barney – Poems from Natalie Clifford Barney

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Avertissement

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