Merci d’exister: a French lesson

I shall sit writing through the afternoon
poems in English, English attempts
but a phrase and a story come from French.

My French friend’s daughter in her class
sensed the teacher hover near her shoulder
and quietly say while touching a finger

to the current exercise, the current open page
‘Merci d’exister.’ Just a phrase
too compressed for a beginner

to understand its import but enough
to raise a blush that would recur
whenever it was remembered. Thank you

for existing. I can’t imagine it in English
or quite translate it. For being here, for bringing
happiness to my teaching, my reason for existing.

page 300

The birth dressing gown

I can’t see this towelling dressing gown
knee-length, with small embroidered flowers
without remembering it soaked in sweat
and smelling like geraniums.

The hours my daughter laboured in it
have left no trace, physically. It blows
on the clothesline, clean, sweet-smelling
a little more faded, florally

but its effect in my memory
is so close it makes a conjugation
and a declension: each tense, each case
rises from a single embedded flower

and even when it is dry and folded
sweat seems to pour from it, the labouring
the way the belt hung down
since it could not be done up.

page 301

Engageantes = detachable sleeves

Why put such work by rush or candlelight
into tucks and pleats and slits that open like flowers
when the important shoulders inside fall to dust?

Through thin wavering crooked panes comes
a light divided into little parcels
while the sleeves lie on a bench like mutton

or a long white swan for dressing.
Over the sleeves the dressmakers are bending
working inside them, preparing the battlements

and suspending, on the outside, cascading jewels and ribbons
so the wearer is protected from indifference or too close
an approach. (They forbid intimacy, these engageantes

though admiration is their sense of breathing.)
Inside the shoulders stiffen a little, then relax.
It is dual crowns they are wearing, that will come off

like heads upon a spike, by a bridge or tower.
The sleeves will be plucked (by thinnest threads
after all this effort) and then stored flat.