in honor of Morton’s Pierrot Lunaire Centenary Carnival Tent

The “tent” is HERE. I’ve never discussed the following poem with Tim, but he must know it. The author is Paul Verlaine (in the MacIntyre translation):

PIERROT

This is no moonstruck dreamer from the play
who jeered at pictures of his dead grandsires;
his light heart, like his candle, has lost its fire–
his thin transparent ghost haunts us today.

See, in the terror of the lightning-flash
his pale blouse, on the cold wind, has the shape
of a long winding-sheet, his mouth’s agape,
and seems to howl while the worms gnaw his flesh.

With the sound of wing-flaps of some bird at night,
his white sleeves signal foolishly through space
to someone unknown who does not reply.

His eyes are holes of phosphorescent light,
and the flour makes more awful the bloodless face
with the pointed nose of one about to die.

The final line is probably the best of them all, but I’m also fond of lines 10-11.

I’m one of those who prefer Verlaine to Rimbaud.