RROSE SÉLAVY NO LONGER SINGS ‘LA VIE EN ROSE’
How many years can a woman pose for a man
in the same bad hat and ratty fur
before the world goes gray before her eyes
and even la-de-la-de-la-de-la sounds like the blues?
How many nights can she lie alone while
the avant garde goes galloping toward the future
on their hobbyhorse? I tell you, my heart may belong
to da-da, but even an alter ego needs l’amour
which is more than a mere word and goes beyond mechanics.
Love—so easy to make, yet more difficult to create
by far than art. That’s why some people call
this kind of song a torch. And I keep singing—
la, de, la—to make something burn.
—from Rattle #10, Winter 1998
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Grace Bauer: “I am currently bent on surviving another winter in Nebraska, which might explain the longing for otherwise and elsewhere that keeps cropping up in my poems.”
