Idyll In A Sylvan Hut

How can I leave it all behind?

This slice of moon —
This wedge of Camembert —
This hot and clamorous night

With its chorus of frogs
And symphony of mosquitos
And angelic choir of nightingales?

This sturdy cabin at the woodland edge,
Its windows open
To the still air, heavy with thunder?

This humble, splintered table,
This slick knife
Which hacks at a stale baguette,

Then scores an orange skin
Quarter-wise — peasant thumbs
Peeling it like unfolding petals?

This bitter wine,
Cinnamon-spiced, with a hint of gall,
And thick and red as oxblood?

This sultry woman by my side,
Her skin gleaming with sweat,
Sticky as the summer night itself?

Her body, slight as a young boy’s,
With buttocks scarcely rounded
And breasts like tangerines?

Her animal eyes

Darting from moon to table

Then back to moon again?

This moonlit path

Winding through forests

On and on and on

And even further —

From this cabin’s portal

To the mighty Pyrenees?

How can I leave it all behind?

Yet leave it I will

For when the morning sun

Bathes the east in a diaphanous pink glow,

I’ll lift the latch and set off in the dawn

Whistling a melancholy tune.

This parody purports to be a translation of a poem by the little-known if not fictitious French Symbolist poet Telfour Tremble (1869-1900).