Sunday, April 29, 2012

National Poetry Month 30 Poems in 30 Days Challenge, Poem #26

Cento of James Joyce

Monsieur de la Palisse, Stephen sneered, was alive fifteen minutes before his death
pious because no man would look twice.
Laughter leaped from his throat dragging after it a rattling chain of phlegm,
bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay.

It wounded him to think that he would never be but a shy guest at the feast-
Melancholy, the dominant note of his temperament
tempered by recurrences of faith and resignation,
as mistakes are the portals of discovery.
 
Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not.
His heart was going like mad,
that queer thing genius is the standard of all experience:
a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

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