2025 Yahtzee Roll #2: Fill #2

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Title: Altamont in Paris
Rating: Teen for dark themes (murder, serial murder, made-up corpses)
No of lines: 14
Poetic form: Bref double
Prompt:
Notes: Lines taken from "The Mirabeau Bridge" by Guillume Apollinaire [trans. by W.S. Merwin] I have included this poem (both the translation and the original French) below mine.
Summary: A spy comes across a crime scene and uses it to his advantage.

Altamont in Paris by okapi

Night comes the hour is rung for Mister Altamont
who is taking cover under Mirabeau Bridge.
Disturbing lies and spies, schemes and dreams, the Seine calls
an unforeseen dance, a chance rendezvous with fate.

Hand within hand, the lovers are blind to all, but death
has left a grotesque rouge on cheeks, a carmine haunt,
and stains of walnut leaves about unblinking lids
burnt cloves and troves of pearly sheen gild love’s last wait

And hope is so violent a thing. Altamont palls
before the scene, lined in fine soot, arranged in strange
folie à deux, but only for a breath, these deaths
absurd might serve to deconcoct affairs of state

The days pass the weeks pass and are gone. Murders taunt
multiply in disguise, distracting wicked dolls.



The Mirabeau Bridge by Guillame Apollinaire [trans. W. S. Merwin]

Under the Mirabeau Bridge the Seine
Flows and our love
Must I be reminded again
How joy came always after pain

Night comes the hour is rung
The days go I remain

Hands within hands we stand face to face
While underneath
The bridge of our arms passes
The loose wave of our gazing which is endless

Night comes the hour is rung
The days go I remain

Love slips away like this water flowing
Love slips away
How slow life is in its going
And hope is so violent a thing

Night comes the hour is rung
The days go I remain

The days pass the weeks pass and are gone
Neither time that is gone
Nor love ever returns again
Under the Mirabeau Bridge flows the Seine

Night comes the hour is rung
The days go I remain

Le pont Mirabeau by Guillame Apollinaire

Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine
Et nos amours
Faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne
La joie venait toujours après la peine.
Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure

Les mains dans les mains restons face à face
Tandis que sous
Le pont de nos bras passe
Des éternels regards l'onde si lasse

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure

L'amour s'en va comme cette eau courante
L'amour s'en va
Comme la vie est lente
Et comme l'Espérance est violente

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure

Passent les jours et passent les semaines
Ni temps passé
Ni les amours reviennent
Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine

Comments

[debriswoman]

I like the descriptions in your poem very much 😊

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Thank you! This is a fill for the Holmes Minor poetry page prompt from last September. The prompt was about Victorian make up. I have sat down 3 times to fill it, and each time it was about making up a corpse using Victorian methods. The first ones involved Holmes and Watson and were a little dark (even for me) so I made Altamont stumbling across a scene and use it to his advantage.