El Segundo Blue here is a road that stops and another and another and the last one goes up and over there you are you can see at last from here the old folks see it all kids dead vacant at the Wayfarers Chapel little verses mar the view the little view up the hill the little view the dead cove the shuttered pleasure palaces teapot tempest I see figured as in a poem say by Mallarmé a landscape tinkle of spoons here is the magic ordering of all experience in a slurping and a burping of our tea jailhouse rock howsawhatsabout matter says the jailer and what are you in for? life of course says the prisoner insouciantly well then says the jailer we'll have to show you the ropes stop the presses I see his image rude immobile standing there holding outright a paper with its headline a stack of them under his arm statuesque In the Woods Others---innocents or else lymphaticals--- Find in the woods nothing but charms languorous, Fresh breezes and warm perfumes. They are felicitous! Others feel seized there---dreamers---by scares mystical. They are felicitous! Me, nervous, and whom a remorse Appalling and vague affrights all intermission without, Through forests I tremble after the manner of a coward Who feared to fall in a trap or saw before him corpses. Those great branches never appeased, like the groundswell, Whence falls a black silence with a shadow more Black yet, all that dreary and sinister decor Fills me with horror trivial and profound as well. Especially evenings of summer: the red of the setting sun Fades into the greyish blue of mists it tinges With conflagration and blood; and the angelus that rings Distantly seems a plaintive cry approaching one. The wind rises hot and heavy, a shiver passes And repasses, ever stronger, in the thickness Ever darker of the lofty oaks, obsessive, And disperses, like a miasma, into space. Night comes on. The owl flies off. It is the instant When of naive grandmas' narratives one thinks--- Under a bush, yonder, yonder, living springs Make a sound of assassins posted taking counsel. Paul Verlaine tr. C. Mulrooney (c) Christopher Mulrooney 2001
	Christopher Mulrooney lives in Los Angeles and does poetry, fiction, translations & photography (such as the shot of the Grand Canyon above).