In the Sante
Guillaume Apollinaire 1880 (Rome) – 1918 (Paris)
I
Before I got into my cell
I had to strip my body bare
I heard an ominous voice say Well
Guillaume what are you doing here
Lazarus steps into the ground
Not out of it as he was bid
Adieu Adieu O singing round
Of years and girls the life I led
II
I'm no longer myself in here
I know
I'm number fifteen in the eleventh
Row
The sunlight filters downward through
The panes
And on these lines bright clowns alight
Like stains
They dance under my eyes while my
Ears follow
The feet of one whose feet above
Sound hollow
III
In a bear-pit like a bear
Every morning round I tramp
Round and round and round and round
The sky is like an iron clamp
In a bear-pit like a bear
Every morning round I tramp
In the next cell at the sink
Someone lets the water run
With his bunch of keys that clink
Let the goaler go and come
In the next cell at the sink
Someone lets the water run
IV
How bored I am between bare wall and wall
Whose colour pales and pines
A fly on the paper with extremely small
Steps runs across these lines
What will become of me O God Who know
My pain Who gave it me
Have pity on my dry eyes and my pallor
My chair which creaks and is not free
And all these poor hearts beating in this prison
And Love beside me seated
Pity above all my unstable reason
And this despair which threatens to defeat it
V
How long these hours take to go
As long as a whole funeral
You'll mourn the time you mourned you know
It will be gone too soon like all
Time past
too fast too long ago
VI
I hear the noises of the city
In the turning world beyond me
I see a sky which has no pity
And bare prison walls around me
The daylight disappears and now
A lamp is lit within the prison
We're all alone here in my cell
Beautiful light Beloved reason
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:47 min read
- 121 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | abac dxdx cexe xfxf xexe BGdgBG HIhxHI jkjk elbl ixix ex ejxe llll xiai |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,773 |
Words | 355 |
Stanzas | 14 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 6, 6, 4, 4, 4, 2, 4, 4, 4 |
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"In the Sante" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 13 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/16170/in-the-sante>.
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