Germain Nouveau

I was trapped in an intelligence
no one wanted - it was time to depart.
I discovered her body’s sentience
instead, wrapped in religion and art.

Once I touched her gold skin and smoke-blue hair,
the whole town knew too. Love quite likes a scene,
but I could not walk with her, and declare
her in the marketplace, to be Queen.

Seen enough, had enough, done enough -
this vision is the same under all skies.
We part in fondness despite the bad stuff.
Poetry is one of those disguises,

put on in annulment. Time to go -
to wipe myself out - incognito.

Oxford - 13 February 2020

Germain Nouveau (1851-1920) was a poet and friend of Arthur Rimbaud. They flatted together in London from March 1874 at 178 Stamford St, South Bank SE1 8TX, where Rimbaud composed Illuminations. The poems in it, Depart and Royaute were written for Nouveau. Their friendship had none of the turbulence that characterised the relationship of Rimbaud and Verlaine.

Nouveau composed his Sonnets du Liban after teaching at a lycee in Lebanon and falling in love with a student’s mother. The scandal resulted in his repatriation. After a mental breakdown in 1891, he became a wandering mystic and Catholic mendicant in France, like James K. Baxter’s favourite saint, Benoit Labre.