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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=346198" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Deodand</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">What are these women up to? They’ve gone and strung <br>Drapes over the windows, cutting out light <br>And the slightest hope of a breeze here in mid-August. <br>Can this be simply to avoid being seen <br>By some prying femme-de-chambre across the boulevard <br>Who has stepped out on a balcony to disburse <br>Her dustmop gleanings on the summer air? <br>And what of these rugs and pillows, all haphazard, <br>Here in what might be someone’s living room <br>In the swank, high-toned sixteenth arrondissement? <br>What would their fathers, husbands, fiancés, <br>Those pillars of the old haute-bourgeoisie, <br>Think of the strange charade now in the making? <br>Swathed in exotic finery, in loose silks, <br>Gauzy organzas with metallic threads, <br>Intricate Arab vests, brass ornaments <br>At wrist and ankle, those small sexual fetters, <br>Tight little silver chains, and bangled gold <br>Suspended like a coarse barbarian treasure <br>From soft earlobes pierced through symbolically, <br>They are preparing some tableau vivant. <br>One girl, consulting the authority <br>Of a painting, perhaps by Ingres or Delacroix, <br>Is reporting over her shoulder on the use <br>Of kohl to lend its dark, savage allurements. <br>Another, playing the slave-artisan’s role, <br>Almost completely naked, brush in hand, <br>Attends to these instructions as she prepares <br>To complete the seductive shadowing of the eyes <br>Of the blonde girl who appears the harem favorite, <br>And who is now admiring these effects <br>In a mirror held by a fourth, a well-clad servant. <br>The scene simmers with Paris and women in heat, <br>Darkened and airless, perhaps with a faint hum <br>Of trapped flies, and a strong odor of musk. <br>For whom do they play at this hot indolence <br>And languorous vassalage? They are alone <br>With fantasies of jasmine and brass lamps, <br>Melons and dates and bowls of rose-water, <br>A courtyard fountain’s firework blaze of prisms, <br>Its basin sown with stars and poissons d’or, <br>And a rude stable smell of animal strength, <br>Of leather thongs, hinting of violations, <br>Swooning lubricities and lassitudes. <br>What is all this but crude imperial pride, <br>Feminized, scented and attenuated, <br>The exploitation of the primitive, <br>Homages of romantic self-deception, <br>Mimes of submission glamorized as lust? <br>Have they no intimation, no recall <br>Of the once queen who liked to play at milkmaid, <br>And the fierce butcher-reckoning that followed <br>Her innocent, unthinking masquerade? <br>Those who will not be taught by history <br>Have as their curse the office to repeat it, <br>And for this little spiritual debauch <br>(Reported here with warm, exacting care <br>By Pierre Renoir in 1872— <br>Apparently unnoticed by the girls, <br>An invisible voyeur, like you and me) <br>Exactions shall be made, an expiation, <br>A forfeiture. Though it take ninety years, <br>All the retributive iron of Racine <br>Shall answer from the raging heat of the desert. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>In the final months of the Algerian war <br>They captured a very young French Legionnaire. <br>They shaved his head, decked him in a blonde wig, <br>Carmined his lips grotesquely, fitted him out <br>With long, theatrical false eyelashes <br>And a bright, loose-fitting skirt of calico, <br>And cut off all the fingers of both hands. <br>He had to eat from a fork held by his captors. <br>Thus costumed, he was taken from town to town, <br>Encampment to encampment, on a leash, <br>And forced to beg for his food with a special verse <br>Sung to a popular show tune of those days: <br>“Donnez moi à manger de vos mains <br>Car c’est pour vous que je fais ma petite danse; <br>Car je suis Madeleine, la putain, <br>Et je m’en vais le lendemain matin, <br>Car je suis La Belle France.”</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Anthony+Evan+Hecht">Anthony Evan Hecht</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=346198" data-title="The Deodand de Anthony Evan Hecht" data-description="What are these women up to? They’ve gone and strung 
Drapes over the windows, cutting out light 
And the slightest hope of a breeze here in mid-August. 
Can this be simply to avoid being seen 
By some prying femme-de-chambre across the boulevard..."></div>
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