Mute Objects of Expression (9 page)

The Sprig of Mimosa
(poetry)

 

Top-of-their-lungs, tender-leafed

Golden chicks of the mimosa

Between two infinities of azure

Cheeping the complementary note.

No, alas! It's not yet to be with the mimosa that I'll master my mode of expression. I know it only too well, I've struggled too hard over too many sheets of blank paper.

But if there's anything at all I've gained on the subject, I don't want to lose it.

I have but one recourse left. I must take the reader by the hand, asking him to oblige me yet awhile, imploring that he allow himself to be led – at the risk of becoming bored with my long detours, assuring him that he will enjoy the reward when he finds himself conveyed at last under my care to the heart of the mimosa thicket, between two infinities of azure.

Complementary Vanities
(poetry)

Top-of-their-lungs in abundance tender-feathered

Mimosa chicks

On the
côte d'azure
are cheeping gold.

Florabundant, top-of-their-lungs, tender-feathered

Between two indefinite blocks of azure

A hundred vainglorious chicks are cheeping gold.

O glorious naifs that once we were

Hatched beneath omega azure

Top-of-our-lungs and feather-bruised

Golden chicks of the mimosa.

Inasmuch as a faithful witness of azure

Nostrils wide breathe their oracles

Florabundant top-of-their-lungs tender-feathered

Chicks of the mimosa cheep of gold.

When you bring mimosa, it's almost as though you're bringing (surprise!) the sun itself. Like a bough that has been blessed (the
blessed bough of Ra worship). Like a small burning torch. The mimosa candelabra . . .

(It's three in the morning and here we are, quite by chance, on Palm Sunday, 1941.)

. . . As though for instance it had rained, and someone had the idea of bringing a branch spangled with droplets . . . Well! Mimosa is just like that: there's some sun caught up in it, some gold.

I imagine this as a subject completely made to order for Debussy.

Canopies, umbrellas, fly-whisks.

At this point in my research, I decided to go back to the
Littré,
from which I retained the entries that follow:

Autruche.
Ostrich: the largest of known birds, and because of its great size unable to fly.

Floribond.
Florabundant: not in the
Littré.
So it will appear in future editions.

There's a wading bird (genus
Gruidae,
crane) by the name of
florican.

 

Faire florès,
to flower.

 

Florilège.
Florilegium: 1. Synonym of anthology. 2. Title of several works dealing with plants remarkable for the beauty of their flowers.

Houppe.
Pompon: 1. Bunch of wool or silk threads, forming a puff. 2. Zoology: tuft of feathers that certain birds . . . Small tuft dotted with hairs . . . 3.
Anat:
papillae – small swellings at the end of a nerve.
Bot:
minute swelling on surface of a stigma, petal, or leaf; a seed composed in this manner.

Houppée,
nautical term: choppy sea, slight foam caused by collision of opposing waves.

Panache:
clump of feathers bound together at the base, which flutter about at the top like a sort of bouquet (from
penna,
feather).

“When the peacock spreads his pompous panache to the winds.” (D'Aubigné.)

Paradis:
vast parks, sumptuous gardens. The parks of Arche-menidan kings (Renan). Persian word.

Bird of paradise: with long tapered feathers (well!).

Gardeners' paradise: weeping willow (well, well!).

 

 

Poussin.
Chick: from
pullicenus,
diminutive of
pullus:
poule, chicken (newly hatched chicken).

The word
poussiniée
exists: “chickery,” a flock of chicks.

Poussinières:
colloquial name for the Pleiades constellation.

Needless to say, I considered these findings, favoring what I had already written, as a bouquet of proof
a posteriori.

So, having circled and circled around this shrub, often straying, despairing more often than rejoicing, distorting more than obeying, I'm now returning (again deceiving myself?) to a consideration of the mimosa's qualities as: “vainglorious, soon discouraged.”

But wishing to give it more nuance, I would add the following:

1. Each branch of mimosa is a perch of tolerable little suns, of sudden small enthusiasms, jubilant little terminal embolisms. (Oh, how difficult it is to close in on the characteristics of things!) It's heartening to see a developing creature reach such bursting
success
at so many extremities. Just as, in well-staged fireworks, the rockets end in a burst of suns.

This is
more
true of mimosas than of other plants or flowering shrubs, because no other flower is so simply a blossoming as such, purely and simply an unfurling of stamens in the sun.

2. All the turgescent papillae, all the small aureoles, aren't yet faded, withered, sallow, dead, when the whole bough shows signs of discouragement, of despair.

To put it better: at the very moment of glory, in the paroxysm of flowering, the leaves already show signs of despair, or at least indications of aristocratic apathy. It is as though the expression of the leaves belies that of the flowers – and the other way around.

They say this foliage looks like feathers, but what feathers? Only ostrich feathers, those that serve as oriental fly switches, those with drooping tendencies, that seem incapable – with good reason – of keeping their bird in the air.