Advertisement

Gas Lamps, by MAURICE ROLLINAT

Share via

Gas-lamps on streets of ill repute

Illuminate for ragged rogues

And those, full of soliloquies,

Who sail with three sheets to the wind.

Accomplices of prowlers sly

Who stalk the dude with silver fob,

Gas-lamps on streets of ill repute

Illuminate for ragged rogues.

And knifings, beatings, fisticuffs.

Shrill whistles, muffled cries and shouts,

Stool pigeons, peeping toms--all these

Mysterious rites are witnessed by

Gas-lamps on streets of ill repute.

From “Gallic Echoes: A Selection of Poems” (Asylum Arts bilingual edition: $16.95 cloth; $8.95 paper; 137 pp.), translated from the French by Kendall Lappin. 1991 by Kendall Lappin. Reprinted with permission.

Advertisement