Town Hall, Fifteenth Arrondissement (tr. by John Ashbery)

You should have heard the soldiers’ feet wounding the swirls that the accordion waltz left on the pavement like a mower’s swath once the parade had passed you should have kissed the soldiers’ feet pulled out of their boots and licked the ankles and climbed as far as the khaki seven and a half millimeters thick would allow you should have shaken their belly like a carpet it was grand illusion day when they escape their deep knowledge and pretend to look for handsome successors but it would be better to look for the heart and put an alarm clock in its place that could play reveille like a puppet but wouldn’t serve coffee in bed you should have rummaged under their false teeth to hunt for hidden diamonds with lively fingers hunt for them everywhere not find them even in the creases of their nakedness. Joy of being a child of the sovereign people of lending a hand to institutions and seeing one’s name inscribed on the slate of urinals in letters of coal tar for a single flag that one has become flapping its boredom at the angles of two streets that the wind stirs unless it’s first the wind of trumpets all love to the winds