Proustian Suffering

If no woman is as precious

as the suffering she accords

because suffering – unlike love – speaks the Word,

then the Martinville steeples,

formed and reformed anew

by space and the eyes are sanctified –

perhaps even built – by the poetry

composed in their name, as well as the longing

felt for tears and death as the curtain

of night recalls them – to

the self whose imagination

and intellect are at war,

that first echoed roar of an aeroplane

offers little enticement to lift

one’s head except to confer

the tranquil sadness from which

masterpieces – the brainchildren

of darkness and silence – are stirred, and without

which the pacifying calm

of remission goes begging – all the

fallacious pledges to kindness,

to knowledge, good faith

when fidelity begins and ends with suffering –

lost in an abyss of moustache wax

and pantomime and the rain

falling so ferociously on

the Champs-Élysées, a man

must elevate himself to know himself –

and must therefore populate

his inkwell and his palette with hurt.