Showing posts with label Deceiver. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Deceiver. Show all posts

Friday 28 September 2018

All That Apart

            
             Dare I confess the truth; I’d rather die  
             And end the desolations of my heart 
             Than untold silken promises should lie.

             Another’s perfume? Does it signify?
             A hotel tab: ‘Room service à la carte’?
             Dare I confess the truth I’d rather die?

             When doubts confound libido’s alibi,
             And silence shouts, there’s no more stinging dart
             Than untold silken promises should lie.   

             Though covert smiles resist the estranged eye
             While ardent phones ring off before they start,
             Dare I confess the truth I’d rather die?

             Deceived deceivers only multiply
             The game that I’d give worlds to not outsmart
             So untold silken promises can lie.

             To share the burning secret we, thereby,
             Abet a robbery. All that apart,
             Dare I confess the truth I’d rather die  
             Than untold silken promises should lie?

(Movie stills from Jacques Rivette’s Paris Nous Appartient, 1961. Françoise Prévost: ‘I don’t know why, but I know. We die because we are life.’)

Anne (Betty Schneider) stalks Paris on a paranoid quest for
the truth of a tragic love affair (Paris Nous Appartient 1961).



See also Re-evaluated Elizabeth Bishop (a Villanelle):
Finishing School for Versifiers (part 1)
Finishing School for Versifiers (part 2)