Strolling home with a stash of Belgian beer, I glance up at the top-floor flat and see the light on like a wee beacon. So, B. has returned unexpectedly from Manchester. She has with her R., a genial baby faced ex-con (GBH), half Jean Genet half Ray Winstone, fluent in French, who carries a copy of La Rochefoucauld in his pocket, lurching disconsolately through the streets of Soho or Tooting, inexplicably present at various Clubs and openings, returning - as wanton as the dawn - with a sack of improbable anecdotes. Tonight he familiarises me with this delightful Verlaine translation:
In that cafe crowded with fools we stood
(Just us two) for the hideous turpitude
of liking men: they never thought, the cunts,
We shat on their dim-witted innocence
Their standard loves, their tinny golden rules
While holding to our principles and tools
We swung and parried to our hearts' content,
Veiled in a cloud our peaceful pipes had sent -
Like Zeus and Hera in their nebulous beds -
Till our two Punch's noses, glad and red,
Wiped by our fingers with delightful squeezes
Under the table jetted great white sneezes.
trans. Alistair Elliot
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