Zone Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A B C DEF GHIBJKLM NEMCOMMPQM CCMM RSTFUSFVCWXMY ZA2ZB2C2ZD2OOE2F2G2M MMMMBH2MMI2B J2K2MMMM JML2M2CBN2O2P2C M2M2 M2C2MMC2H C2BMCM2M2 BSM2M2 MVMMO2SM M B M2 M2OM2M2 M2O MQ2M2R2R2H MMSWOMM2B BMMOMM S2S2 M2 SM2 M M2 M F MM2 MC2 O2S T2MU2M Z M2At last you're tired of this elderly world | A |
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Shepherdess O Eiffel Tower this morning the bridges are bleating | B |
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You're fed up living with antiquity | C |
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Even the automobiles are antiques | D |
Religion alone remains entirely new religion | E |
Remains as simple as an airport hangar | F |
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In all Europe only you O Christianism are not old | G |
The most modem European Pope Pius X it's you | H |
The windows watch and shame has sealed | I |
The confessionals against you this morning | B |
Flyers catalogs hoardings sing aloud | J |
Here's poetry this morning and for prose you're reading the tabloids | K |
Disposable paperbacks filled with crimes and police | L |
Biographies of great men a thousand various titles | M |
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I saw a pretty street this morning I forgot the name | N |
New and cleanly it was the sun's clarion | E |
Executives laborers exquisite stenographers | M |
Criss cross Monday through Saturday four times daily | C |
Three times every morning sirens groan | O |
At the lunch hour a rabid bell barks | M |
The lettering on the walls and billboards | M |
the doorplates and posters twitters parakeet style | P |
I love the swank of that street | Q |
Situated in Paris between the rue Aumont Thieville and the avenue des Ternes | M |
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Here's the young street and you're still a baby | C |
Dressed by your mother in blue and white only | C |
You're very pious and with your oldest friend Rene Dalize | M |
Nothing is more fun than Masses and Litanies | M |
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It's nine o'clock the gaslight is low you leave your bed | R |
You pray all night in the school chapel | S |
Meanwhile an eternal adorable amethyst depth | T |
Christ's flamboyant halo spins forever | F |
Behold the beautiful lily of worship | U |
Behold the red haired torch inextinguishable | S |
Behold the pale son and scarlet of the dolorous Mother | F |
Behold the tree forever tufted with prayer | V |
Behold the double gallows honor and eternity | C |
Behold the six pointed star | W |
Behold the God who dies on Friday and rises on Sunday | X |
Behold the Christ who flies higher than aviators | M |
He holds the world's record for altitude | Y |
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Christ pupil of the eye | Z |
Twentieth pupil of the centuries knows its stuff | A2 |
And bird changed this century like Jesus climbs the sky | Z |
Devils in the abyss look up to watch | B2 |
They say this century mimics Simon Magus in Judea | C2 |
It takes a thief to catch a thief they cry | Z |
Angels flutter around the pretty trapeze act | D2 |
Icarus Enoch Elijah Apollonius of Tyana | O |
Hover as close to the airplane as they can | O |
Sometimes they give way to other men hauling the Eucharist | E2 |
Priests eternally climbing the elevating Host | F2 |
The plane descends at last its wings unfolded | G2 |
bursts into a million swallows | M |
Full speed come the crows the owls and falcons | M |
From Africa ibis storks flamingoes | M |
The Roc bird famous with writers and poets | M |
Glides Adam's skull the original head in its talons | M |
The horizon screams an eagle pouncing | B |
And from America there comes a hummingbird | H2 |
From China sinuous peehees | M |
Who have only one wing and who fly in couples | M |
And here's a dove immaculate spirit | I2 |
Escorted by lyre bird and shimmery peacock | B |
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Phoenix the pyre the self resurrected | J2 |
Obscures everything ardently briefly with ash | K2 |
The sirens abandon their perilous channels | M |
Each one singing more beautifully arrives | M |
Everyone eagle Phoenix Chinese peehees | M |
Eager to befriend a machine that flies | M |
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You are walking in Paris alone inside a crowd | J |
Herds of buses bellow and come too close | M |
Love anguish clutches your throat | L2 |
You must never again be loved | M2 |
In the Dark Ages you would have entered a monastery | C |
You are ashamed to overhear yourself praying | B |
You laugh at yourself and the laughter crackles like hellfire | N2 |
The sparks gild the ground and background of your life | O2 |
Your life is a painting in a dark museum | P2 |
And sometimes you examine it closely | C |
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You are walking in Paris the women are bloodsoaked | M2 |
It was and I have no wish to remember it was the end of beauty | M2 |
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In Chartres from her entourage of flames Our Lady beamed at me | M2 |
The blood of your Sacred Heart drenched me in Montmartre | C2 |
I'm sick of hearing blissful promises | M |
The love I feel is a venereal disease | M |
And the image possessing you in your pain your insomnia | C2 |
Vanishes and it is always near you | H |
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And now you are on the Riviera | C2 |
Under lemon trees that never stop blooming | B |
You are boating with friends | M |
One is from Nice one is from Menton two from La Turbie | C |
We are staring terrified at giant squid | M2 |
At fish the symbols of Jesus swimming through seaweed | M2 |
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You are in the garden at an inn outside of Prague | B |
You are completely happy a rose is on the table | S |
And instead of getting on with your short story | M2 |
You watch the rosebug sleeping in the rose's heart | M2 |
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Appalled you see yourself reproduced in the agates of Saint Vitus | M |
You were sad near to death to see yourself there | V |
You looked as bewildered as Lazarus | M |
In the Jewish ghetto the clock runs backwards | M |
And you go backwards also through a slow life | O2 |
Climbing the Hradchen listening at nightfall | S |
To Bohemian songs in the singing taverns | M |
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You in Marseilles among the watermelons | M |
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Yu in Coblenz at the Hotel Gigantic | B |
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You in Rome beneath a Japanese tree | M2 |
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You in Amsterdam with a girl you find pretty who is ugly | M2 |
She's engaged to marry a student from Leyden | O |
Where you can rent rooms in Latin Cubicula locanda | M2 |
I remember spending three days there and three in Gouda | M2 |
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You are in Paris hauled before the magistrate | M2 |
You are under arrest you are a criminal now | O |
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You went on sorrowful and giddy travels | M |
Ignorant still of dishonesty and old age | Q2 |
Love afflicted you at twenty and again at thirty | M2 |
I've lived like a fool and I've wasted my time | R2 |
You dare not look at your hands I want to weep all the time | R2 |
On you on the one I love on everything that frightened you | H |
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And now you are crying at the sight of refugees | M |
Who believe in God who pray whose women nurse babies | M |
The hall of the train station is filled with the refugee smell | S |
Like the Magi refugees believe in their star | W |
They expect to find silver mines in the Argentine | O |
And to return like kings to their abandoned countries | M |
One family carries a red eiderdown you carry your heart | M2 |
Eiderdown and dreams are equally fantastic | B |
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Some of the refugees stay on in Paris settling | B |
Into slums on the rue des Rosiers or the rue des Ecouffes | M |
I have seen them often at dusk they breathe at their doorways | M |
They budge from home as reluctantly as chessmen | O |
They are chiefly Jewish the women wear wigs | M |
And haunt backrooms of little shops in little chairs | M |
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You're standing at the metal counter of some dive | S2 |
Drinking wretched coffee where the wretched live | S2 |
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You are in a cavernous restaurant at night | M2 |
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These women are not evil they are used up regretful | S |
Each has tormented someone even the ugliest | M2 |
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She is the daughter of a police sergeant from Jersey | M |
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Her hands I'd never noticed are hard and cracked | M2 |
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My pity aches along the seams of her belly | M |
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I humble my mouth to her grotesque laughter | F |
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You're alone when morning comes | M |
The milkmen jingle bottles in the street | M2 |
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Night beautiful courtesan the night withdraws | M |
Fraudulent Ferdine or careful Leah | C2 |
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And you drink an alcohol as caustic as your life | O2 |
Your life you drink as alcohol | S |
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You walk to Auteuil you want to go on foot to sleep | T2 |
At home among your South Sea and Guinean fetishes | M |
Christs of another shape another faith | U2 |
Subordinate Christs of uncertain hopes | M |
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Goodbye Goodbye | Z |
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Sun cut throated | M2 |
Guillaume Apollinaire
(1)
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