Andy  P. Antippas		"Baudelaire" True to its ironic custom, In times of calamity and political upheaval, The sky of Paris is superb.                            Baudelaire and Benjamin or Baudenjamin   It had been a vomitous night and his flesh Was etiolated from want of fresh air. But still, sitting there, bathed in Bengal light, Beneath the tattered awning of the Divan Le Peletier, He managed to look beautifully artificial: black suit, Linen shirt and cuffs, brick red cravat, Rose colored gloves to the side. He was there to wake up with their evil coffee fit for goats, And their free walnuts that were like the brains of tiny children. But especially for the view of the swirling crowds of women, This month all in white with violet scarves, and the brave kids From the Ecolé Polytechnique, and especially, Just then, to spot an idler, there, this one with A touch of ceruse on his cheek, walking his turtle on a leash, Looking about, fastidiously lost, every block becoming An infinitely languid station of the cross.   Otherwise he loathed the Peletier. There were always there, over there, those two sort Of tenebrous Germans in their creepy blue workman’s blouses. One seemed always setting things before the other; Every morning, How production will beget its negation, Every morning, Unfolding the force of the dialectic. And far worse, drinking cheap and foul Rhenish wine, All that clutter of pretentious musicians and painters. Oh how he despised them, more even than Belgians, And he harbored this idea how all over the world, At the same moment, all artists and musicians would be beaten to death. He had this taste for oblivion—often the café table before him, His mind staring at its roundness—became the mouth of an abyss, And he vertiginous. That was why, and maybe because he’d lost his Red goose pen back at the Pimodan, he wrote over this hole Poems on paper with his finger, rubbed before every indecent syllable, On that filthy table before him.		"Bruno" Bruno Said to Sidney One night, at dinner, just before Toast and Zutphen, ( I wish I’d been there to pickpurse more wit And see someone off to “fetch my Ficino”) Bruno said to Sidney: “Poking around old, what’s his name, Otto’s Bookstore in Antwerp, I got this great idea Looking at those emblems stamped from wood— A bird escaping its cage… An eagle fluttering up against the sun— Are all really the soul leaving the flesh. Well then my brain became unhinged, (I’m off to Anticyra—I know), Thinking the whole stelliferous thing up there, And more worthy, could be One yet Infinite.” But already star-lit Sidney had set sail, That most illustrious and excellent knight, Was thinking elsewhere and about his lady’s eyes. That most courteous and graceful knight, Could see the battle flags, and hear the triple volley, And knew the vermillion trenches by the Yssel Would make Vermeer’s little girl’s hat glow, The same way that fortuitous drenching At Montségur would make red the flowers of Cezanne. But mostly about his lady’s eyes.