The Lovers’ Chronicle 20 June – return, reprise – verse by Marceline Desbordes-Valmore – art by Léon Bonnat – photography by Jean Dieuzaide

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

lets see, not to me, we did that already
and not to sender, well too obvious
”Something with more substance”
could go the long way, follow this;
from Bowie’s brilliant song and album
Station to Station;
”The return of the thin white duke”
”But without darts”
right, not throwin’ anything,
i want to go there for this line;
“Here we are, one magical moment
Such is the stuff from where dreams are woven”
”Yes, our story, from moment to moment”
we have been weavin’ dreams and life
and wherever we go we know
we can return to this

© copyright 2023.2024 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

for a long while it was clearly insanity, keepin’ on goin’ back expectin’ different results only to have the same thing happen again, would have been merciful had someone put a stop to it, some can only learn the hard way i suppose, did finally, but it took about thirty years, turn the page to now, i do, here every day, because there is purpose here, made sense of the madness, no excuses, there ain’t no manual, but most importantly i return to you

© copyright 2022.2024 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

maybe one day, has come
soft and veiled voice heard
we responded to recover
from lost ways, detours
and disappointments
and walked towards
becomin’
a heart for a heart

and when we feel ourselves
under the weight of thoughts,
we find in each other exactly
what we were lookin’ for

© copyright 2021.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

when i want to feel
i always know
where to go

do you know what it is to miss
do you know the subtle ways
how to hold on no matter what
to return and return again

do you remember
when you had mine
and i had yours

no longer hidden
not just in dreams

how to be half of a whole

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

this year a return
to a friendship
to a place
visited before
rooted in work
and the reason
behind this chapter

could be some other
returns lurkin’ ahead
hopefully
one in particular
can be avoided

need to focus on you
and this road map
to bein’ where i should be

© copyright 2019.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

when i want to feel
i always know
where to go

when you had mine
and i had yours

maybe one day
no longer hidden
not just in dreams

perhaps
we can return
and return again

do you know what it is
to be half of a once whole

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

do you know what it is to miss
do you know the subtle ways
how to hold on no matter what
to return and return again
in shadow and sunlight

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Gone away
Undone
My heart
Never as it was

With his dances,
Stole her away

He can dance
And have her
Heart in hold

What is held so dear
As any realm
Under the sun

By this dance
You shall understand

Give me a horse
A fast horse
And send me
Out on the sage

© copyright 2016 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Today is the birthday of Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (Douai, Nord, France; June 20, 1786 – July 23, 1859 Paris); actress, poet and novelist.  She published Élégies et Romances, her first poetic work, in 1819.  Her melancholy, elegiacal poems are admired for their grace and profound emotion.  In 1821 she published the narrative work Veillées des Antilles.  It includes the novella Sarah, an important contribution to the genre of slave stories in France.  Marceline appeared as an actress and singer in Douai, Rouen, the Opéra-Comique in Paris, and the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, where she notably played Rosine in Beaumarchais’s Le Barbier de Séville.  She retired from the stage in 1823.  She later became friends with the novelist Honoré de Balzac, and he once wrote that she was an inspiration for the title character of La Cousine Bette.  The publication of her innovative volume of elegies in 1819 marks her as one of the founders of French romantic poetry.  Her poetry in is also known for taking on dark and depressing themes, which reflects her troubled life.  She is the only female writer included in the famous Les Poètes maudits anthology published by Paul Verlaine in 1884.  A volume of her poetry was among the books in Friedrich Nietzsche’s library.

Desbordes-Valmore was a friend of the writer Louise Crombach, who introduced Desbordes-Valmore to Marie Pape-Carpantier. Their friendship ended after Crombach was prosecuted for lesbianism in 1845.

Elégies

La mort est dans l’adieu d’un ami véritable.

• Poésies, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, éd. Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, 1830, Au Sommeil, p. 177

Peut-être un jour voix tendre et voilée
M’appellera sous de jeunes cyprès:
Cachée alors au fond de la vallée,
Plus heureuse que lui, j’entendrai ses regrets.

• Poésies de Mme Desbordes-Valmore, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, éd. Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, 1822, Élégie, p. 117

Se reprendre à des biens perdus,
C’est marcher au flot qui recule.

• Les Pleurs: Poésies nouvelles, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, éd. Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, 1834, p. 227

Qu’en avez-vous fait ?

Vous aviez mon coeur,
Moi, j’avais le vôtre :
Un coeur pour un coeur ;
Bonheur pour bonheur !

• Les plus belles pages de la Poésie française, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, éd. Sélection du Reader’s Digest, 2001 (ISBN 2-7098-0248-1), p. 310

L’absence

Quand je me sens mourir du poids de ma pensée,
Quand sur moi tout mon sort assemble sa rigueur,
D’un courage inutile affranchie et lassée,
Je me sauve avec toi dans le fond de mon coeur !

• Les plus belles pages de la Poésie française, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, éd. Sélection du Reader’s Digest, 2001 (ISBN 2-7098-0248-1), p. 311

Today is the birthday of Léon Bonnat (Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat; Bayonne, France 20 June 1833 – 8 September 1922 Monchy-Saint-Éloi, France); painter, Grand Officer of the Légion d’honneur, art collector and professor at the Ecole des Beaux Arts.

Bonnat never married, and lived for much of his life with his mother and sister in the Place Vintimille (renamed Place Adolphe-Max in 1940).

Gallery

Today is the birthday of Jean Dieuzaide (Grenade, Haute-Garonne, France 20 June 1921 – 18 September 2003 ); photographer. Perhaps best known for his 1951 portrayal of Salvador Dalí swimming at Cadaqués, his moustache decorated with daisies, and for the 1954 Life magazine assignment to photograph a tightrope walker couple’s wedding for which he climbed astride the shoulders of one of the performers.

Dieuzaide was a photographer in the French Humanist style and a member of Le Groupe des XV, and later of Les 30 x 40, and was the founder of the group ‘Libre Expression’, also practicing abstraction. Though Dieuzaide began as a photojournalist it was his travel and architectural photography that appeared in books from the 1950s. In the seventies he created the famous French gallery Le château d’eau, pôle photographique de Toulouse in an old water tower and dominated the photographic culture of the city of Toulouse in south-west France for over two decades.

Gallery

thanks for stoppin’ by y’all

Mac Tag