Fleur de Péché

by Raoul Ponchon

Comment, c’est encore toi, chiffon?

Petite gringalette

Grosse comme un quart de siphon,

Ou deux liards de galette!

Pour faire un corps comme le tien,

Statuette fragile,

La recette est commode: rien

Fournit d’abord l’argile;

A force de pétrir ce rien,

On obtient quelque chose:

Je ne distingue pas très bien,

Mais cela paraît rose;

On le barbouille de printemps,

De champagne qui mousse,

De fanfreluche, on bat longtemps,

Et c’est là ta frimousse.

O fleur qu’un souffle peut former,

Qu’une risette éclaire,

Tu peux, à défaut d’art d’aimer,

Avoir le don de plaire !

Peach Blossom

by Raoul Ponchon

Why, it’s you again pretty young woman?

little slender lady

big as a quarter of a pipe

or two pennies of pancakes!

To make a body like yours

delicate statuette

the recipe is a tall order: nothing

rendered in clay

Has the strength to shape this nothing,

you obtained something:

I can’t distinguish very well

but it seems pink

You a painting of spring

of foaming champagne

of fancy frills you bat a long time

and it’s your sweet little face

O flower a breath may form

a child’s smile illuminates

you have no lack of art of love

to possess the gift to please!

translated from French by Mark Lager

Raoul Ponchon was born on December 30, 1848 in La Roche-sur-Yon, France. After several changes in employment, Raoul eventually embraced his status as a bohemian. in Paris He had a routine every day of the week: breakfast in the café of Cluny, a meal of inexpensive broth from Racine Street, and a return in the afternoon to enjoy his glass of absinthe.

In October 1871, Raoul Ponchon was part of the circle of “Zutistes” (a group of poets who met at Hotel Foreigners on Boulevard Saint-Michel, at the corner of Racine Street, which is now the Hotel Belloy Saint-Germain.) André Gill, Léon Valade, Camille Pelletan, and Paul Bourget were some of those involved. Raoul Ponchon was a friend of Arthur Rimbaud and at that time Ponchon was writing his first poems (“drinking songs”) while living in a room made of crates.
In October 1873, Raoul Ponchon was one of seven recipients of the first edition of A Season in Hell.

Jean Richepin became Raoul Ponchon’s closest friend. Ponchon spent many holidays in Richepin’s house at Brittany and considered Richepin as his second family. (He would later be buried next to his friend at the cemetery in Pléneuf-Val-André.) Along with their mutual friend Maurice Bouchor, they nicknamed themselves the “Vivants” or “Three Musketeers” of poetry.
Raoul Ponchon also attended painting exhibitions and was in the large literary circle surrounding Nina Villard de Callias, woman of letters, poet and musician, mistress of Charles Cros. H
On December 3, 1876 (the same date he died over sixty years later), Raoul Ponchon published his first poem in The Republic of Letters entitled “Vinous Song.” Ponchon’s love affair with alcohol was chronicled by Guillaume Apollinaire (dubbing him “our last Bacchic poet”).

Raoul Ponchon did not think highly of himself as a poet. In fact, he considered himself
unworthy of an official publication. Nonetheless, he finally published his first collection of poems (the only collection published during his lifetime) in 1921 at the age of 72. La Muse au Cabaret (“The Muse in the Tavern”) is a series of Ponchon’s musings on Parisian life, food, wine, absinthe, as well as unrequited love, melancholia, time, and death.
He spent his last days at the Hotel des Trois Collèges and died on December 3, 1937 at the age of 88, having outlived Mallarmé, Verlaine, Rimbaud, as well as his friends Bouchor and Richepin.

References:

Apollinaire, Guillaume. Le Flaneur des deux rives, Gallimard, 1929.

Coulon, Marcel. Raoul Ponchon, Bernard Grasset, 1927.

Robb, Graham. Rimbaud, W.W. Norton & Co., 2000.

Mark Lager is from St. Louis, Missouri with a B.A. in English and a B.A. in Philosophy/Religion from Truman State University. He is currently pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing at the Arkansas Writers MFA Workshop. His poem “Pocahontas, Arkansas: June 2, 2001″ was published in issue 99 (spring 2015) of Chiron Review and his translation of “La Chanson de la Lune” (“Moon Song”) by Raoul Ponchon was published in Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art.